Case Study: Data Protection Officer Requirement with Greater Manchester Police

• by Olivia Lawlor-Blackburn
• Advent IM Blog General

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) is the territorial police force in Manchester responsible for and providing a policing service to the people within the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester in North West England. Given the scale of criminal activity and responsibilities the force has, there is a requirement to store, manage and process information that carries varying levels of sensitivity and protective marking. The force is fully committed to maintaining the confidentiality, integrity and availability of its information assets in all forms.

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) were mandated to have a Data Protection Officer (DPO) with the onset of GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. This case study discusses how GMP choose a supplier through a procurement process, which was heavily weighted towards quality. The study outlines the specification GMP needed to fill with a Data Protection Officer, including the importance of independence and expertise.

Advent IM has extensive knowledge of policing due to working in this sector for nearly 20 years at a strategic governance level, providing risk management and accreditation support and developing Senior Information Risk Owner (SIRO) training with the then ACPO and were chosen as the supplier for GMP.

The study reflects on the challenges GMP were going to face with the increasing pressure on police forces to correctly and appropriately manage peoples personal information and with the onset of GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, GMP anticipated that there was going to be a growth in demand on this area of the organisation.

Download and view the case study in full here.

Advent IM has worked extensively with UK Police forces including a range of information security and information risk management projects for police as well as Data Protection and training, including Senior Information Risk Owner (SIRO) training which has been carried out by Mike Gillespie, for over 10 years.

In addition to our core services and training, our unique insight and experience, we can provide an outsourced specialist individual, team, or even support to a current team to work on an ad-hoc or contractual basis, to see through your data protection projects on time. We are already successfully providing this service to forces.

For more information on all our Police training and services please visit the Police homepage.