The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has published a new Enterprise Data Strategy with the aim of growing the maturity and increasing the impact of its data.
This follows its launch of the ICO2025 strategic plan in 2022, which outlined its broader ambitions and principles to underpin its work.
The new strategy, published in June, includes an implementation plan for the next year that balances value delivery with foundational development.
It includes the development of a target operating model with roles, accountabilities and processes for prioritising projects, along with a communications plan and implementing feedback mechanisms.
Efforts to improve data management and governance will including identifying a core set of standards and policies, exploring how to introduce data stewardship into the ICO, the beginning of work on an enterprise data catalogue and implementing robust processes for managing data published on its website.
Academy and network
There is a plan to set up an ICO Data Academy, to further develop the internal Data Analyst Network, to begin work on a single data and analytics platform and consider services that could support advanced analytics outputs.
The ICO also plans to integrate AI and other emerging technologies into administrative tasks, while aiming to fully understand the ethical, security and legal implications.
In a blogpost on the strategy published last week, the ICO’s executive director for digital, data and technology, Rob Holtom, said: “We recognise that by innovating with data we become a more knowledgeable, and therefore (more) effective, regulator.
“Greater use of data could provide deep insights into the needs of our customers, identify and predict instances of harm, and guide prioritisation and decision making. This would make our work more productive and focused.
“As a regulator, we’re shifting our guidance away from ‘don’t do’ to ‘how to’. Similarly, we needed our use of data to ‘show, not tell’.”
