Briefly describe the initiative/ project/service; please include your aims and objectives

The Greater Manchester Information Strategy is a unique and ambitious commitment to improve the information and data governance ecosystem across Greater Manchester. Delivery of this strategy is managed by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM), Information and Data Change Programme function. This function is a part of the wider GMCA and TfGM Information and Data Governance Shared Service.

In order to delivery this work, the programme has two distinct delivery areas. The first is to embed a culture of continuous improvement to enhance the GMCA and TfGM’s operational information and data governance performance. The second is to work strategically with Greater Manchester partners to deliver projects which improve the way the Greater Manchester system operates in the governance, sharing and management of information and data. All of this work is to deliver the vision and missions of the GM Information Strategy.

The refreshed 2026 – 2029 vision of the strategy is: A GM data and information eco-system that ensures the right people have access to the right information at the right time.

The refreshed missions of the 2026 – 2029 GM Information Strategy are:

1. Foster greater trust between the people, communities, and organisations of Greater Manchester
2. Promote and maintain the responsible and ethical use of information
3. Maintain representative and proactive governance to continue to drive the strategy
4. Through an academy approach, enable professional development of Information and Data Governance professionals and associated officers.
5. Unify standards through a governance framework to enable the management, sharing and use of information.
6. Enable the GM system with an approach to data governance.
7. Ensure the appropriate governance and ethical considerations when using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

The GM Information and Data Governance Change Programme is the mechanism for the GM Information Strategy. There are two distinct programmes of activity under the Change Programme:

The first is how we ensure that organisationally, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and Transport for Greater Manchester have the appropriate processes, systems, training and roles in place to ensure organisational compliance and outstanding delivery of Information and Data Governance. This is vital in how we as a Shared Service work to the GM Information Strategy and also how in turn, we therefore support the ambitions and seven priority areas of the Greater Manchester Strategy. This work is overseen by both the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and the Transport for Greater Manchester Information and Data Governance Boards.

The second programme area is how we work more effectively with our partners across the GM region to address shared priorities around good regional information and data governance practice. This work has been informed by engagement with civil society and improves how organisations from across Greater Manchester public sector eco-system work together. This programme of activity s overseen by the Greater Manchester Information Board.

What are the key achievements?

Over the past three years the Change Programme Function has built up a solid record of delivery with both organisational change projects and GM wide partner led projects.

Organisationally, we have embedded an approach to continuous improvement based on Karl Lewin’s change approach. We frame all of our change through three distinct stages. Our BAU work is in a frozen state. This allows us to control the amount of activity we are undertaking at any one time and to clearly understand the difference between what is our business as usual work, and the processes and systems we are working to improve. Our unfreeze stage is where we take scoped areas of our work and we perform a change project to improve how this area of our work is performing. This allows us to bring the organisation with us on the change as we are not overwhelming with too much activity and we can be clear on what we want to change and why. Once the change has been delivered we refreeze this activity back into BAU however crucially, we ensure that we have measure in place to monitor the change and to evaluate the success of the change. This allows us to then make data informed decisions on which areas we wish to unfreeze to work on again and thus we have an effective process for continuous improvement.

An example of this in action is around our Information Asset Management project. Phase 1 delivered a series of outputs which led to us putting in the foundations of information asset owners, administrators, registers and training. When we ‘refroze’ the project having delivered this work we monitored the usage of the registers we had created. We also invited internal audit to audit the usage. We found that engagement was dropping and unearthed the reasons for this. This was over a period of approx. 9 – 12 months. This then gave us the evidence that we needed to unfreeze this area of our work, to build on the foundations and further embed the registers. We did this through a variety of mechanisms and have now frozen it again, with more enhanced monitoring in place. This is the cycle of continuous improvement in action.

Organisationally, over the past three years we have delivered:

2 x Information Asset Management projects

Embedded key case management systems to manage:

– Data protection impact assessments (Dapian)

– Information rights requests and security incidents (iCasework)

– 2 x Information Rights projects

– Contracts and Procurement project

– Two level of mandatory organisational training in cyber security and being data confident

– Data Maturity Assessment across two organisations (GMCA and TfGM)

The work we have done across Greater Manchester, working with our partners include:

– Citizen Led Security Standards to understand data sharing and the citizen voice.

– Developed a set of principles for citizen engagement when implementing automated decision making principles.

– Conducted a resident survey on Data Rights and Data Ethics

– Arranged Data Ethics training for GM partners

– Matured the governance overseeing the delivery of the GM Information Strategy

– Launched a three year Information Sharing framework project (Ongoing)

Entered into two Knowledge Sharing Partnerships with GM Universities including:

– Information Sharing Framework adoption model with Salford University (Ongoing)

– Development of an ethical assessment tool for AI technologies with Manchester Metropolitan University (Ongoing)

– Entered into the Open Government Partnership and made commitments to deliver work on open data as part of our membership

By having these two distinct areas of focus, the programme is delivering change both internally across the GMCA and TfGM and across Greater Manchester as a region. Further, we can demonstrate a record of delivery, both internally and externally which being driven out of one single change function supported by a wider Information and Data Governance Shared Service is a huge achievement.

How Innovative is your initiative?

Currently, there is no equivalent regional strategy for a devolved region for information and data and therefore, there is not the equivalent programme of change in any other region. This makes the work we are doing innovative and unique. Having a change programme that is both working to improve the internal organisational structures for good information governance across two organisations, and working collaboratively across the region to better enable partnership working in the space of information governance and management is innovative.

By having this programme approach we have been able to fund a range of projects. Organisationally, this has resulted in improved processes, systems and understanding of Information and Data Governance across the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and Transport for Greater Manchester. Regionally, this has enabled us to fund long term projects that are working with academia and social enterprises to look at key issues such as community engagement, information sharing and ethical approaches to AI.

The wealth of this work being delivered out of an Information and Data Governance Shared Service is unique. Further, the service having a specific Change Management function that is responsible for the delivery of these projects is unique. There are not many other comparable information and data governance services that have this structure and therefore are enabled to deliver this scale of change and impact.

What are the key learning points?

There have been a significant number of learning points that have emerged over the past three years. Having an effective mechanism to identify these learning points is the first learning point itself. As a programme and project delivery function we have embedded approaches to lessons learned that means we evaluate the success of each project and change initiative. We work with key stakeholders to ensure a range of views. We take an agile approach to how we conduct lessons learned activities that are appropriate to the project. For example, we run at a minimum lesson learned sessions at the conclusion of projects. We have implemented retrospectives to check in on delivery throughout projects. We conduct quarterly ways of working review sessions to take a step back from specific projects and to evaluate how we are working as a function both across the organisations we support and the region that we support.

A key learning we have made and are always learning from is that change takes time to embed. There are several mechanisms that can be used to embed change but to sustain change takes time, energy and resilience. This is a key reason why from an organisational perspective, we have implemented Lewin’s change model of freeze, unfreeze and refreeze. This provides us with a model that allows us to measure the changes we have made, monitor the adoption of the change and to be able to non-judgementally recognise when a change needs to be worked on again. Change is iterative but this can also result in change feeling messy. Having a mechanism that clearly frames what is being changed and what isn’t is crucial for success.

The most important lesson learnt is the importance of people in change management. People are central to the change and at all levels of the structure you are working within, need to be brought along on the journey. As part of each project, we take a tailored approach to the communications and engagement activities that will be needed to bring people along the journey of change. We spend considered time in the planning and discovery phase of the projects we run to ensure we have understood the route cause of problems, mapped processes and captured requirements. This builds resilience with the people involved in the change and sets a platform that means those people have been heard and managed.