This report outlines the actions in progress to improve the Council’s policies, systems and processes for better Information Governance.

Michael Graham, Assistant Director of Legal & Democratic Services, submitted a report outlining the action underway to improve the Council’s policies, systems and processes for Information Governance following several limited assurance reports in this area. 

The report provided an update on: recruitment to key posts in the Information Governance Team and the interim arrangements in place to cover the backlog of Subject Access Requests; the Central Management of FOI requests through the Customer Relations Team, which was aiming to increase responses within the required timescale to 90%, as expected by the Information Commissioners Office; data transparency; the work of the Information Governance (IG) Board; the development of the Information Management Strategy, which would be informed by the technical review which had been undertaken by Leicester City Council.  The Strategy was expected to be submitted to Policy Committee on 7 March 2022 for approval. The report also outlined the progress made on training being undertaken by on Cyber Security and Information Governance.  It was noted that Cyber Security was a key strategic ‘red’ risk for the authority and there had been a significant improvement in staff who had completed the mandatory training since the previous meeting, but there was still more work to be done to improve the completion rate further.  The report explained some of the difficulties that were being experienced in achieving 100% compliance and the action that was being taken to address these issues: discussions with Trades Unions regarding the seriousness of the matter; further pushes to complete training; and consideration of blocking staff access to the network until the training was completed.   

Resolved:     That the progress being made to improve the Council’s Information Governance be noted and the future action outlined in the report be endorsed.