The Information Commissioner's Office has
just published an extremely interesting document showing that it could be
having a record year. A record year in terms of staff turnover, that is. A paper prepared for last month’s meeting of
the ICO’s Management Board suggested that the current trend, based on the first
quarter’s figures, was for 19% of staff to leave the organisation by the end of
the current financial year.
Given that
the 2012-13 actual staff turnover was just 7.7%, should this be of much
concern?
Hopefully,
the staff turnover stats for the first quarter of the current year (4.7%) were
just an aberration. And there are plenty
of people left – the ICO does have a staff of some 395 (or 363.6 when you count
them in terms of full time equivalents).Staff levels do not appear to be reducing.
Perhaps
there are good reasons for such a high turnover rate in such a fine
organisation. It’s not as a result of much internal disciplinary action. The
ICO has only conducted 7 discipline, dignity at work and grievance cases since
April 2012. It’s obviously a nice place to work, and packed with people who are
nice to each other. It’s also quite a healthy environment. Only 5.46 days a
year are lost to sickness, compared with the civil service average of 8 days a
year.
Perhaps more
data controllers are realising that they need people who have some hands-on
experience of this data protection stuff, and because practitioners are quite
thin on the ground, they want people with intimate knowledge of what it as that
regulators are really concerned about, so that they can fix those areas of
their businesses, first.
Perhaps the
local economy is picking up, and some of “Wilmslow’s finest” are being tempted
away by employers who can offer better packages than the ICO can. It can’t be pleasant
commuting to such an exclusive area, past estate agents and car showrooms that
advertise homes and vehicles so far beyond the price range of the average ICO
employee.
But people
do still want to work at the ICO. Some 213 applicants responded to some 25
recruitment campaigns, and 55 interviews were held during the first quarter.
Perhaps part
of the answer is the changing nature of the ICO’s work. Fewer staff are
required to help organisations register their details and pay their fees, and
people with different skills are required in the policy, audit and enforcement
teams.
So, a
possible (but, presumably, unlikely) 19% staff turnover rate need not be a
cause for undue concern for those of us who are interested in what emerges from
the ICO. Essential posts can still be filled when the incumbent leaves. And if
Parliament wishes to question the effectiveness of the organisation, it needs to ask itself whether it allocated sufficient resources to the ICO in the first
place.
After all, the
revamped financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, has apparently increased
its funding requirements by 15% to £432.1 million, following the disbanding of
the Financial Services Authority earlier this year.
If it costs
that much to regulate the UK’s financial services industry, is it really the
case that the ICO can properly regulate all 372,369 organisations who have
registered as data controllers, and also to supervise the FOI landscape, on a
budget of just £20 million? That’s less than one twentieth (4.6%) of the FCA’s
budget.
Answers to
the usual address, please.
Sources:
Image
credit:
.
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