• Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.491-514
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• 2022

Public reforms based on New Public Management have made the public sector specialized, and accordingly the role of public administration has expanded as well as the demand on professional jobs has increased. On the other hand, with the rapid development of information and communication technology, the data produced by public sector organizations has also significantly increased. This environmental changes made data management and a data management job in the public sector critical. However, there have been very few studies of conceptualizations and systematic investigations on data management jobs. Moreover, specific definitions, types or qualifications of/for a data management job or a person who do this job are rarely reflected in relevant laws and regulations. Based on the systematic literature review, this study conceptualized professionalism, identified its multiple dimensions, and draw a conceptual research framework. Focusing on the professional control on personnel management which is one of the dimensions of professionalism, relevant laws, work guidelines and job descriptions included in job openings were analyzed with regard to a data management job in the public sector. The findings are as follows. First, an assigned role and responsibility associated with a data management job have vague boundaries. Second, work guidelines and manuals only focus on the post quality control stage rather than equally addressing all the eight stages of the data lifecycle. Third, neither a data management job in the public sector nor a person who take care of this job is not appropriately defined. Therefore, a role and responsibility of/for the job and a person in charge should be reflected in the relevant laws and guidelines in a tailored way. More importantly, job analyses and evaluations should be thoroughly conducted to enhance professionalism on data management jobs in the long term.