Corporate plan 2008-2011
Commissioner’s foreword
Our Corporate plan sets the Information Commissioner’s Office’s
(ICO’s) direction for the next three years. We aim to be a
transparent and strategic organisation, and we will use this plan
to tell staff and external bodies more about our vision for society
and our priorities to help us achieve that vision.
The ICO has come of age. Data protection and privacy have never been so important to individuals, to organisations and to politicians. In addition, after three
years, freedom of information has become part of the fabric of public life and is
plainly here to stay. The ICO’s influence and impact are matters of daily record. We
remain a very small public body – perhaps marginalised for too long – but, as this
plan indicates, we are now set for a time of relative (if not absolute) growth.
Our baseline grant from the government, for all of our freedom of information and Environmental Information Regulations work, will increase by some 17% - though still only to a total of £5.5million. This will enable us to restore much-missed guidance and enforcement programmes and achieve acceptable service standards for complaints. If we can increase our resources further – through secondments for example – we will be able to eat into the backlog, which in practice will enable us to start cases sooner.
High profile data problems have left no-one in doubt about the importance of security and the need for better safeguards for personal details. The calls we have been making for many years for stronger powers, sanctions and resources are now being answered. We hope that data protection fees for larger organisations will increase to give us the income we need to our job well. Although details and timing remain to be resolved, this plan shows how we will rise to the new challenges and enlarge and modernise our infrastructure.
It would be wrong to focus only on novelty and growth. This plan contains plenty of “Business as Usual”, where we are seeking to build on the progress we have made in recent years with a continuous drive towards demonstrable improvements in performance and effectiveness.
With far greater staff involvement than previously, we are outlining our activities through four types of function: educating and influencing; resolving problems; enforcing; and developing and improving. This themed approach achieves greater integration between freedom of information and data protection and reinforces the message that the ICO is a single organisation with clear plans, clear direction and a hugely worthwhile and exciting task for the so-called Century of Information.
Richard Thomas, Information Commissioner