What Is Information Policy and Why Does It Matter?

I like to take classes where I don’t know too much about the subject since that gives me more room to learn something, and that is certainly the case here. I have an idea of what information policy is, and some examples of information policies like FOIA and CIPA, but I am not really too familiar with information policy overall so I am looking forward to this class - and NO I am not brown-nosing. I am serious.

The debate over the definition of information comes into play when trying to define information policy (McClure, 1999), which I am sure is annoying several of my classmates. Personally, I am ok with agreeing that we cannot truly come to a consensus definition, but I think a working definition would be invaluable in this case. How on Earth can we talk about policies about something when we have no working definition of that something? Maybe it would help to have a policy stipulating that information is one or more specific things, like the definition of a retainable record that McDermott (2007) quotes from the Federal Records Act. If we could at least agree on what we are saying “information” is, then we could begin to narrow down the areas of policy that govern it (cf. Duff, 2004).

Ok, forget about defining information. What about the definition of information policy? McClure tells us it “is a term used to describe a set of interrelated principles, laws, guidelines, rules and regulations, directives, procedures, judgments, interpretations, and practices that guide the creation, management, access, and use of information” (1999, p. 306-307). Given that this expert is also our professor, this is obviously a definition we should seriously consider sticking to in class, even if it is based on the term “information” as we still have no consensus definition for that.

Why does this matter to us? There are 7 students and 1 professor in this course, all of whom are part of the College of Information. Obviously, we care about information, trying to define what it is, understand how people access and use it, and improve that access. Therefore, we need to be concerned with government policies that regulate what counts as information (as opposed to a secret which is arguably data and not information since we 1. don’t know it’s there and 2. are unlikely to find out about it), how that information is recorded, saved, stored, and indexed so that we can also worry about how well people can access and use it.

I find it dangerous and scary that the majority of information professionals seem to take little interest in information policies until those policies are in place (like libraries and the USA PATRIOT Act). Wouldn’t it make more sense if those information policies were written by people who know something about information, its collection, storage, indexing, retrieval, use, et al.? Then we could have some say in the policies governing our discipline so those policies help rather than hinder the field, both academics and practitioners. Of course, in order to do this, we would first have to follow Relyea’s advice and learn how to analyze existing policies to understand how them came into being, how they are now, and how to alter them in the future (2008).

NOTE: I could only access 2/3 of Chuck’s article in the Encyclopedia of Library & Information Science since pages 308 and 310 are missing from the Google Books preview. If anyone knows where to get the whole article, please let me know.

References

Duff, Alistair F. (2004). The past, present, and future of information policy. Information, Communication & Society, 7(1), 69-87. Retrieved January 8, 2009, from Informa database.

McClure, Charles R. (1999). United States information policy. In Allen Kent (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science [Electronic resource], vol. 65 (pp. 306-314). New York: Marcel Dekker.

McDermott, Patrice. (2007). Who needs to know? The state of public access to federal government information. Lanham, MD: Bernan.

Relyea, Harold C. (2008). Federal government information policy and public policy analysis: a brief overview. Library and Information Science Research, 30, 2-21. Retrieved from ScienceDirect database January 7, 2009.