Policies are one of the basic building blocks of government. Laws, regulations, executive orders, and official statements guide how agencies fulfill their missions. Information policies guide actions and decisions about why, how, when, and who uses information. Government information policies can serve two different, but complementary, purposes—information stewardship and information use.

Information stewardship policies address:

• confidentiality, privacy, and records management
• system security, data definition, quality, and integrity
• long-term preservation of information with enduring social, legal, or historical value

Policies that promote the usefulness of your information address:

• innovative ways to use information to improve the quality or lower the cost of services, or to create new services or better ways of doing business
• interagency and intergovernmental information sharing
• information handling skills of public employees
• public access