Choosing help to appoint and support an Information Officer

An Information Officer isn't a commodity hire — they're a governance role that touches almost every function in your business, and the consultant or service provider advising you on the appointment will shape whether your company actually embeds compliance or merely performs it.

The difference between a strong candidate and a weak one rarely comes down to a CV line about POPIA. It comes down to whether the person can run a compliance programme across operations they don't control, communicate risk to people who don't want to hear it, and hold that line when pressure mounts.

Operational backbone beats certification

Many organisations hire an Information Officer who knows POPIA law cold but has never actually run data handling processes. They can quote the Act; they can't redesign your intake form or audit why a call centre is keeping call recordings for two years. When you're vetting a candidate or relying on an advisor to shortlist them, prioritise experience in roles that required them to move from policy into practice.

Ask for a specific example: a time they identified a process that wasn't compliant, and what they did about it. Listen for whether they persuaded a department to change, escalated to leadership, or documented a finding and moved on. The best candidates have scars from being the person in the room saying "we can't do that the way we do it now."

Certifications exist — IITPSA, ISACA, AICPA — but they're not the filter. Someone with six months of hands-on compliance fix-it experience and a course certificate beats someone with five years of checkbox auditing and a degree. When you're discussing candidates with a recruiter or consultant, ask them to weight operational evidence more heavily than credentials.

Loneliness in the role; resilience in the person

An Information Officer often stands alone against the organisation's inertia. Your finance team wants to move customer data to a cloud service they've already signed for. Your MD wants a specific CRM without a local data processing agreement. Your HR department treats data subject requests as a compliance hassle, not a legal obligation. The person you appoint has to hold boundaries without becoming a blocker.

When meeting candidates or briefing a consultant on what you need, look for signs of diplomatic stubborness. Can they explain why a decision matters to someone who doesn't care? Do they have examples of implementing controls that were unpopular? Have they worked under a leadership team that didn't prioritise compliance?

You're hiring someone who will be frustrated, often. The resilience to do that work without burning out or becoming purely antagonistic is rare. Ask candidates how they'd handle a scenario where the business wanted to do something compliant-adjacent but not compliant, and they had to say no. Their answer will tell you whether they'll be an effective advocate or a ticket-logging administrator.

Alignment with your industry and company stage

POPIA applies everywhere, but the shape of compliance work is wildly different between a healthcare provider, a fintech startup, a retail chain and a professional services firm. An Information Officer who has scaled compliance in your sector understands which battles matter first.

A startup needs someone who can build compliance into operations as they grow, not someone who's only ever enforced policy in a mature organisation. A healthcare business needs someone who knows patient confidentiality law and the tension between care and consent. A financial services company needs someone who can read into FSCA expectations and Prudential Authority letters.

When you're selecting between candidates or briefing a recruitment partner, specify your sector and your stage. A candidate with industry experience is worth more than a generic POPIA consultant. If your consultant advising on the appointment keeps proposing candidates who don't know your world, that's a signal they're running a process on volume, not fit.

The role doesn't demand a degree in law or compliance. It demands judgment, backbone, and the experience to know which corner of POPIA to tighten first. A Strove-listed cybersecurity consultant can help you clarify what that looks like in your business and what to listen for in interviews.