Health Information Management: Integrating Information Technology ...

STRATEGY, IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION 153
1 general, outlining the responsibilities at the strategic/tactical and the tactical/
operational level;
2 information system development, selection and implementation.
General guidelines for responsibilities in information
management
In outline the responsibilities for information management are as follows:
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the BoD sets the rules for information management;
the organization units determine the ‘what’ (the business objectives), followed
by the IM department which adds the ‘how’ (the guidelines for facilitating the
business objectives using IT);
the IM department, at the request of the BoD:
– formulates the framework for information management;
– monitors the coherence, across the organization, of the organization’s
information management;
– warns when the parts threaten to become less than the whole (for example,
when systems are considered that do not interconnect, or when a
department’s IT strategy is at odds with the overall organizational/
information strategy). The IM department is answerable to the BoD, after
which the BoD decides;
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the responsibility for the use of IT to reach business objectives lies with the
organization units;
the responsibility for the quality of data in the information systems lies with
the organization units;
the responsibility for the technically correct functioning of information
systems and infrastructure lies with the IM department.
It follows from this division of responsibilities that information management
expertise is necessary both at a central level (BoD and the IM department) and
decentralized across the organization units. In the discussion on information
management expertise that is needed at the centre and within the organization
units, it is important to draw a distinction between strategic/tactical and tactical/
operational information management.
Strategic/tactical information management
Strategic/tactical information management deals primarily with the development
and the practical application of the information strategy. Practical application in
daily business means making the translation to tactical measures to resolve
recurring operational problems. Or, in other words: having developed a strategy,