Electronic records management in the Malaysian public sector: the existence of policy

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/09565690910999201
Date02 October 2009
Published date02 October 2009
Pages231-244
AuthorUmi Asma' Mokhtar,Zawiyah Mohammad Yusof
Subject MatterInformation & knowledge management
Electronic records management
in the Malaysian public sector:
the existence of policy
Umi Asma’ Mokhtar and Zawiyah Mohammad Yusof
Faculty of Technology and Information Science, Universiti Kebangsaan
Malaysia, Bangi, Malaysia
Abstract
Purpose – The existence of policy serves as a guideline to facilitate actions and decisions to be taken.
Electronic records management should be driven and guided by clear, comprehensive, understandable
policy, to direct the organization and ascertain the effectiveness of functions implemented. The
purpose of this paper is to find out whether government agencies in Malaysia do possess such a policy
for electronic records management. In addition, the aim is to identify the responsible party for the
policy besides investigating the sources referred to in developing the policy.
Design/methodology/research – The survey employs a questionnaire to gather the data from 25
selected government departments in Klang Valley and Putrajaya, Malaysia.
Findings – As anticipated, not all government departments possess electronic records management
policy far from complete, clear, and easy to implement. Most surveyed samples are executing policy
provided by Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) and
National Archive of Malaysia (NAM) with some modifications to suit their needs. On the other hand,
the number of organization carrying out electronic records management without any policy in place is
alarming.
Practical implications – Electronic records management is carried out in some organisations
merely based on their instinct and initiatives, far from complying with international standards of best
practice.
Originality value – This paper provides evidence from an original study.
Keywords Government departments, Records management,Malaysia, International standards
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Malaysian government determination to materialize as a developed country with
emphasis on the development of IT industry has been undeterred even when the
country was hurt by the economic crisis in 1997. The wide development of information
and communications technology (ICT) industry has encouraged the government to
invest in the industry and introduce IT literacy culture to aspire and realize its “Vision
2020”. Many changes were made in order to enable Malaysia to parallel developed
nations such as Japan and the USA.
The government introduced the prime application of multimedia super corridors
(MSC), which consists of seven applications, i.e. electronic government, smart schools,
multi-purpose card, tele-health, tecnopreneur development, e-business, and research
and development clusters. With the application of the electronic government, the
original conventional management was changed to an automated system. The
computerized system was executed phase by phase to replace the manual system.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0956-5698.htm
Malaysian public
sector
231
Received 22 December 2008
Revised 30 June 2009
Records Management Journal
Vol. 19 No. 3, 2009
pp. 231-244
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0956-5698
DOI 10.1108/09565690910999201

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