Risks to Digital Public Sector Information

This project has identified a set of risks which affect the long-term access to trusted digital information in public sector agencies. It also established a set of indicators that can be used to identify the risks in public sector agencies. The results of this survey will be used to create risk profiles and prioritisation activities within Archives New Zealand.
 
The survey was sent out to CIO’s where they existed in agencies and to equivalents or nearest-equivalents where there was no CIO role. CIO’s were targeted for their strategic view-point and because of their role in controlling resources that might be used for digital information management.

The survey was intended to provide a view of the key risks to digital information being faced by CIO’s and was made up of 26 risks divided into four sections:
 

  1. Organisational Infrastructure Risks
  2. Business Continuity Risks
  3. Information Management Risks
  4. Technology, Technical Infrastructure and Security Risks

The sample size was 112 agencies and the response rate was 48% (54 agencies).
 
The Digital Information Risks survey was conducted over 3 weeks in late 2010. It was intended to highlight areas in the public sector where digital information was at risk of being lost and to discover which risks are the most prevalent. The primary findings of the survey were as follows:
 

  1. Organisational infrastructure and business continuity risks were of most concern to respondents. Information management and technology risks were of least concern.
  2. Information discoverability, quality and metadata issues are considered likely to exist in most organisations but are not deemed to have a major impact on their operations.
  3. Resourcing is still a major problem for organisations. Resourcing was found to be an issue in a 2006 survey and remains a problem in 2010.
  4. The risks to information which Archives New Zealand have focussed on in producing guidance and training are not those of most concern to the Chief Information Officer (CIO) respondents of the survey.
  5. The long-term risks to digital information have to-date had little impact on the day-to day business of most respondents and so their perceived impact is low within these organisations. Short-term risks to information are much better understood and the bulk of resources is targeted in this area.

The Digital Information at Risk Survey can be accessed in both PDF and rtf formats.
 
 
For more information about this survey, please contact rkadvice@dia.govt.nz