Our professional team provides assurance and guidance in all aspects of information governance and its management. This is undertaken using a robust framework for safeguarding information.
We provide you with access to a wealth of knowledge, expertise, tools, and techniques delivered by governance specialists to keep your business safe.
As a valued strategic partner we offer a reliable information governance service that can work across a wide range of projects and programmes.
Compliance and assurance
We support you to find ways to improve services, share information, and make change happen in a way that benefits local communities and keeps you within the law. Our compliance solution involves providing support for the annual Information Governance (IG) toolkit submission. We support you to commission services, share information and make changes happen to deliver your priorities.
We have professional IG managers who will provide you with clear, concise advice and take responsibility for getting the details right. This includes:
- Helping you to submit your annual IG toolkit, undertaking a gap analysis on your processes, preparing and monitoring your toolkit improvement plans.
- Co-ordinating the Information Governance activities relating to the successful delivery of these IG toolkit improvement plans.
- Investigating and helping you manage any Information Governance Serious Incidents and breaches that may happen.
- Supporting you with the completion of the Data flow Mapping and Information Asset Management required for an IG toolkit submission.
- Raising awareness of IG requirements, policies, and good practice. We give you access to our network of IG specialists who provide briefings and other bespoke analysis to raise awareness of IG requirements.
- Supporting compliance with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 that came into effect from May 2018.
- Helping you to identify where a Data Processing Agreement is needed and providing you with support to draft one.
- Providing support and training to ensure 95% of your staff meet the required level of compliance in respect of IG requirements.
Information Governance project support
As organisations work more closely to achieve better outcomes for their patients and citizens, they need to be able to share data and join systems and processes together. Safe and secure technology options are needed to increase the range of ways to interact and communicate with your organisation.
Data sharing has become complex within this challenging healthcare landscape and requires a legal basis to allow data to flow between organisations. We provide support to assess your requirements and desired outcomes, highlight any potential or actual risks, and identify solutions to be included in your strategic programmes and projects.
Our policies and processes provide a clear decision pathway that shows all necessary approval has been gained. We:
- Provide specialist advice on all aspects of data sharing, and assist you in drafting appropriate Data Sharing Agreements.
- Support teams in the completion of Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) where required, ensuring there is a legal basis for data to be used or shared.
- Support key Information Governance workstreams and projects.
Procurement support
We provide Information Governance support for service redesign or procurement projects. By creating formal arrangements we give you access to relevant documentation and audit results. We also confirm that your providers operate in a compliant manner.
- We provide professional support to the procurement process by ensuring all bidders comply with the necessary Information Governance required to safely deliver a service and can meet their contractual obligations.
- Our experienced evaluators assist in all stages from service and procurement design to evaluation and moderation, as well as offering professional advice and guidance along the way.
- We work collaboratively with other teams within our own organisation to ensure Information Governance compliance for any service redesign programmes.
Specialist advice and guidance
We support your decision-making and operations by sharing good practice, innovations, and benchmarking data from across our customer base.
To ensure that our advice and guidance are up to date, we continue to invest in horizon scanning, continuing professional development, and participate in regional and national governance forums. Our team distill the knowledge gained, interpret it for local consumption, and make it accessible. We:
- Provide specialist advice and support to all staff, including the Data Protection Officer, the Caldicott Guardian, and Senior Information Risk Owner (SIRO).
- Implement national standards and provide advice to teams on business continuity arrangements for information assets
Policy production
It is important that all your local Information Governance policies and guidance are fully up to date, reviewed, and revised as required.
Working in close collaboration with you, we:
- Provide examples of good practice in policy and guidance development
- Provide you with templates with guidance to use
- Review and revise your policies to reflect your priorities as well as changes in relevant legislation
Data Protection Impact Assessments
The SCW Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs), which may hold commercially sensitive data, are not uploaded onto our website as many of the SCW DPIAs are completed where SCW is the Data Processor on behalf of the Data Controller. It has been agreed by the Information Governance Steering Group that it would be inappropriate for SCW to publish a document that they were not the Data Controller for. DPIAs may be made available on request and after agreement of the Data Controller. If you wish to obtain more information about this, please contact us for further details.
Training
We understand the importance of getting the IG basics right to avoid reputational and financial risks within businesses and retain the confidence of patients, the public, and health partners. We take a rigorous approach to understand your IG training needs to deliver timely training. We:
- Scope your Information Governance training needs
- Develop a training needs assessment
- Design and deliver relevant and targeted training
IG in digital transformation and consultancy
We have senior consultancy staff who are very experienced in supporting digital transformation programmes and have many years of specialist Information Governance experience in interoperability solutions.
This part of the Information Governance service provides expertise (amongst others) to the following interoperability programmes:
- Connecting Care – Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire localities
- Connected Care – Frimley and Berkshire West localities
- Care and Health Information Exchange – Hampshire
- Integrated Care Records – Bath and North East Somerset
- Joining Up Your Information – Gloucestershire
- Somerset Integrated Digital electronic Records (SIDeR) - Somerset
For more information on our information governance services please contact SCW Head of Governance Services,
