The First Year: The Independent Information Governance Oversight Panel’s report to the Secretary of State for Health

People’s lives may be lost if information is not shared appropriately across the care team looking after them. People’s trust may be damaged if information they have provided in confidence is improperly disclosed. When handling people’s confidential data for their care, health and care organisations must not compromise either their safety or individuals’ trust. All health and care organisations must share information wisely and protect it with vigilance, in the interests of all service users, all of the time.

These apparently simple principles are reflected in laws, rules and procedures that are known as information governance. In 2012-13 an Information Governance Review was carried out for the Department of Health by Dame Fiona Caldicott. Her report, published in April 2013, became known as the Caldicott2 Report to distinguish it from an earlier report that she delivered to the Department in 1997.

The Government accepted all the 26 recommendations in the Caldicott2 Report and the Secretary of State for Health asked Dame Fiona to set up a new independent panel to provide annual updates on what progress was being made in implementing them. The Independent Information Governance Oversight Panel was also tasked with reporting on the state of information governance across the health and care system as a whole. This is IIGOP’s first annual report.

The introduction explains IIGOP’s role and ways of working. It notes that IIGOP began its work in a rapidly changing environment which brought advantages and disadvantages. The advantages included widespread support for the principles and recommendations in the Caldicott report, which could be considered to have established a new consensus about how health and social care information should be safeguarded and shared.

However, an unintended consequence of the changes introduced by the Health and Social Care Act 2012 was the loss of centres of expertise in information governance that had existed in Strategic Health Authorities and Primary Care Trusts. The emergence of new organisational structures at a time of financial stringency appears to have made it difficult to employ sufficiently expert information governance staff. In spite of helpful interventions by Ministers, senior people in some of these new organisations were slow to appreciate the complexity and importance of information governance in the health and social care system.