Strategic Liaison
Ensuring our voice is heard
We proactively try to inform, advise and influence key stakeholders to ensure that they have a positive impact on the pursuit of our objectives.
The Strategic Liaison Department plays an essential role in delivering the Policy and Strategy elements of our Corporate Plan. We co-operate closely with Policy Delivery in our work on achieving these corporate information rights policy objectives.
Our work is focused on building and maintaining relationships with those who have a significant role in helping, hindering or harming the ICO’s ability to achieve its mission of promoting and upholding information rights and delivery of our strategic objectives. This work is centred on important information rights issues of the day.
We proactively try to inform, advise and influence key stakeholders to ensure that they have a positive impact on the pursuit of our objectives. We also try to identify emerging issues and make sure that the ICO is well placed to respond to these by sharing information with our colleagues and helping devise our responses.
Strategic Liaison’s day-to-day activities centre on managing the ICO’s relationship with key stakeholders and making sure we make a difference on issues that are strategically important to us.
Roles in Strategic Liaison
Strategic Liaison is lead by a Head of Department and divided into 5 Teams each taking the lead for managing relationships falling in their defined business sectors and activities. Within teams there are usually Group Managers, Senior Policy Officers, Lead Policy Officers and Policy Officers. They are supported by a Liaison Support Officer.
What skills do we look for?
Key to these roles is the ability to build and manage relationships with external stakeholders, requiring confident and influential interpersonal skills.
You should also be able to rapidly assimilate, digest and analyse high volumes of complex information, whilst applying sound judgment in your decision making. Providing detailed responses to formal consultations and parliamentary evidence is a common occurrence often within tight timescales. Duties can also involve making presentations at conferences and some media work (depending on role) so excellent written and verbal communication skills are required. You must have the ability to manage a busy and varied workload often involving travel to meetings away from the ICO.
Our people were involved in every aspect of this high profile case study of The Consulting Association.
