Data Tools & Technology Items & Expenditure

Reference: 24-25248

Date response sent: 26/09/2024

Details of enquiry

1. CIO and Chief Data Officer:
   • Who is the current Chief Information Officer (CIO) at your NHS trust and please could you provide their contact email?
   • Who is the current Chief Data Officer (CDO) and please could you provide their contact email?
   • If your trust does not have a designated CDO, could you please provide the name and position of the most senior person responsible for data management and data governance within the organisation – and please could you provide their contact email?
2. Data Tools and Technologies:
   • Could you please provide a list of the data tools and technologies currently in use by your trust (e.g., data integration, data governance, data quality, data privacy tools, data visualisation tools, data storage solutions, etc.)?
3. Expenditure on Data Tools and Technologies:
   • What has been the total expenditure on data tools and technologies over the past five years (broken down annually and by line item, if possible)?

Response sent

The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is a small specialist mental health Trust, and not a hospital.

We provide outpatient, and mainly psychological, services.  We do not provide acute services, nor inpatient patient services, nor detention facilities,  and do not have an  A&E department.

As you will see below in our responses, we do not have comparable numbers of senior posts nor Data Tools to large Acute Trusts.

1. CIO and Chief Data Officer:
   • Who is the current Chief Information Officer (CIO) at your NHS trust and please could you provide their contact email?

Jon Rex; IMTmanagementTeam@tavi-port.nhs.uk

• Who is the current Chief Data Officer (CDO) and please could you provide their contact email?

We do not have an equivalent role that matches any of the descriptions provided.

2. Data Tools and Technologies:

• Could you please provide a list of the data tools and technologies currently in use by your trust (e.g., data integration, data governance, data quality, data privacy tools, data visualisation tools, data storage solutions, etc.)?
• Data Visualisation Tool: Power BI
• Data Privacy Tool: Included within Microsoft Licencing package
• Data Storage: Data withheld under FOIA s31(a) Law Enforcement.

The Trust has engaged exemption to withhold some of the requested data, where indicated; for parts of questions 1 and 4 under s.31(a) of the FOIA, Law Enforcement: the prevention or detection of crime. This is a qualified exemption that requires the authority (ie this Trust) to carry out the public interest test. We have carried out the public interest test and have set out below the public interest arguments which we have considered:

Arguments in favour of disclosure:

• Promoting accountability and transparency on how public funds are utilised and spent
• Public confidence that the Trust has robust arrangements in place for data storage

Arguments in favour of maintaining the exemption:

• The Trust has a duty to ensure that its information systems and assets are kept secure
• Disclosure of the requested information could facilitate criminal activity, in particular cybercrime, and especially when combined with other information already in the public domain or which could be gleaned from other sources, including any information that the Trust has previously provided or may be forced to disclose in the future.
• Disclosure of the requested information could, therefore, increase vulnerability to malicious attack, including the corruption or loss of data, software, hardware or other equipment, which would impact on the Trust’s ability to provide essential services
• For the reasons given above, disclosure could also adversely affect the security of supplier operations, on whose services the Trust relies.

Balance of Weight of Argument

We have concluded that, on balance, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosure

3. Expenditure on Data Tools and Technologies:
   • What has been the total expenditure on data tools and technologies over the past five years (broken down annually and by line item, if possible)?