The ICO exists to empower you through information.

Digital and social content

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Digital communications forms a central part of how people receive information today. A single post can reach millions of people.

A day in the digital and social team at the ICO is varied. We transform complex subjects into clear simple guidance, break and respond to news, engage in online conversations with businesses and journalists, and bring people behind the scenes at events with the Commissioner. 

Digital communications is a key part of our comms strategy, complimenting and enhancing our PR, events and media work. Our digital channels continue to grow; on average, we reach over 400,000 users every month via social media and direct marketing.  

Staff in the digital and social team work on content creation, driving social engagement with our audiences and our partners, SEO, direct marketing and platform management.  

Campaigns 

We work to find creative ways to promote best practice, raise awareness with the public about their rights and communicate with stakeholders about our work.

Some of our recent campaigns include:

World Book Day

We look to use trending topics like World Book Day to showcase our resources. We created data protection-themed puns from well-known children’s titles and linked to our new school lesson plans on data protection. The campaign reached over 50,000 people with an engagement rate of 6.6%. 

Facial recognition technology 

We often have complex information, guidance or investigations to explain to people with little knowledge of the complexities of data protection. We use infographics and animations to explain things step by step. We used this approach for our Opinion outlining the steps organisations should take when considering live facial recognition. This meant the public could fully understand the risks and why it was so important that privacy was built in. 

Working from home  

To support people and businesses during the pandemic, we developed an online hub that translates our guidance about working from home into bite-sized actionable guidance. Our content and web teams worked together to design user-focused journeys and content. We then promoted this through our various digital channels. The guidance has had over 14,000 views in the past 12 months.

Data protection and working from home: What you need to know

Your views matter - the listening tour

John Edwards, the Information Commissioner has started his term of office with a listening tour to learn from businesses and the public. We’ve produced a video diary to bring stakeholders along on his journey and ensure they can hear the lessons learnt and the variety of views collected so far.  

Our channels 

We have the following digital channels: