Information Governance Officer

Location: One Canada Square, London

Department: Governance

Salary: £37,322 - £43,231

Hours: 34.75

Contract Type: Permanent

Role Purpose

We protect the public by upholding high standards in eye care services in the UK. We currently register and regulate around 35,000 optometrists, dispensing opticians, student optometrists and dispensing opticians, and optical businesses, known as registrants. Our Governance team forms a critical part of delivering this as an organisation, ensuring that we meet with our duties as a regulator and charity. The team provides a core corporate function to make sure the appropriate corporate structures and processes are in place for the GOC to fulfil its duty to protect the public. For the Information Governance Officer, this means supporting the breadth of the GOC functions with information governance advice. This is a diverse role that will see the candidate work across all levels of the organisation to ensure that the GOC meets its statutory obligations in respect to information governance, including providing advice and ensuring that policies and procedures are maintained to meet these duties.

Key Accountabilities

• Support all information governance activity, including advising the Senior Information Risk Owner (SIRO), Chief of Staff and Senior Management Team (SMT) on the management of risk and issues related to information governance;
• Managing the information asset register and retention schedule review process, including supporting information asset owners to ensure the GOC is compliant with its statutory obligations and models best practice;
• Undertaking breach investigations – including escalation and reporting to the ICO where necessary;
• Delivery of actions to ensure compliance with policies;
• Supporting staff with completion of privacy impact assessments;
• Supporting staff in data retention activities;
• Coordinating and quality assuring responses to FOI, DPA and register requests;
• Monitor compliance with IG responsibilities and performance against relevant indicators, compiling statistics and drafting reports to SMT, Council and Committees;
• Coordinating publication of FOI requested material and updating the publication scheme;
• Development and review of information governance policies, guidance and action plans;
• Providing expertise and advice and obtaining legal advice where necessary;
• Monitor, identify and report on trends in information requests and data breaches and circulate key data to the team and the wider organisation as necessary;
• Identify corporate-level information governance risks and escalate issues, as necessary;
• Process the development of our stakeholder and data sharing agreements and coordinate our system of monitoring and review of existing agreements to ensure they remain relevant;
• Process corporate complaints and compile and report lessons learned;
• Develop and deliver induction and training on Information Governance to staff, members and workers;
• Keep up to date with current legislation, best practice and innovation (particularly in the regulatory sector), including engagement both internally and externally, and translate this knowledge to suggest changes to GOC’s information governance practices;
• Support the Governance and Compliance team with compliance activity across the organisation, including the corporate complaints process and corporate policy review process;
• Advise on the delivery of new process, projects and change work across the GOC to ensure it is compliant with our information governance responsibilities, models best practice and the necessary data impact assessments have been undertaken.

Essential Skills/Experience/Qualifications

• Exceptional organisational and planning skills, and the ability to prioritise workload;
• Experience of working in a data protection and/or information governance role, including responding to complaints and delivering good service;
• Excellent oral and written communication skills with a good attention to detail;
• Good levels of numeracy and the ability to interpret statistical information;
• Experience of drafting and presenting policies and reports;
• Experience of advising senior management and non-executive members on their obligations in respect to information governance and/or compliance;
• Ability to identify, understand and clearly explain principles of data protection and information governance legislation;
• Experience of corporate complaints handling or other compliance related activity;
• Regulatory experience.

Closing date for this role is 16 February 2026 11:59pm, please note we reserve the right to close this role early dependent on number of applications. Please note that your application will only be considered if it includes both CV and a cover letter. The cover letter should be no longer than 2 A4 pages and must demonstrate how you meet the essential criteria of this role.