The fear of getting it wrong

Anita Saigal,
Engagement Manager,
Centre of Excellence for Information Sharing

It’s the mid-point of our week of blogs and today we are looking at the issue of the end user. We have often found that when talking to practitioners, they cite the Data Protection Act as being a major barrier to information sharing, but when we delve deeper the issues as to why they are not sharing information can lie a little closer to home. It’s useful to ask yourself the question does the issue really lie within your own organisation?

In our work with regulatory services we found that developing trusted relationships was key to sharing information, and where these were under developed people made risk-averse decisions as to whether information could be shared, the type of information that could be shared and with whom.

For many people the fear of “getting it wrong” can pose a huge barrier. It often presents itself through a reluctance to share poor quality data, concern about a loss of personal or organisational reputation as well as worries about being fined. Also, remembering organisational mistakes can make it easier to adopt reasons not to share information.

Within organisations we can find many reasons not to share information so it is really important to take stock and think about all the benefits that sharing information can bring, not least for the end user. As someone once said, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always got”. In these challenging times within organisations, we need to step out and do things differently.

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