Issues Underpinning Information Policy in Malaysia: An Articulated Holistic Model

Abstract

Information policy is necessary to strategize planning so as to ensure continous information access and availability to the citizen of a nation. However, studies in information field particularly information policy-making, are scarce despite the fact that information policy-making has been confronted with problems resulted from the absence of standardization in issues underpinning the formulation of information endeavour. In Malaysia, information policies are created as reactions to issues that crop up at any one time. This caused information policy makings done in isolation, not coordinated and intergrated, resulted in policy that is decentralised, conflicting, non-comprehensive and disintegrated. This study seeks to determine the issues underlying information policy and propose a comprehensive anor holistic information policy model for Malaysia where currently the information policy is overshadowed by the information technology. A qualitative design, with a combination of document content analysis and interviews, was employed for data collection. 91 issues were identified as commonly underpin the national information policy. These issues were then grouped into 6 categories which was later used to underpin the new proposed information policy making model.