The ICO exists to empower you through information.

Empowering you through information.

Those four words sum up ICO25.

I want – we all want – a regulator who empowers.

Empowering people to confidently share their information to use the products and services that drive our economy and our society.

Empowering organisations to use information responsibly and confidently to invest and innovate.

And empowering people to hold government to account, driving transparency that helps us all better trust in the decisions taken by public bodies.

These are the principles that will underpin our work for the next three years.

But these are not ambitions that we can simply talk into being. We need a clear plan, one that not only sets out the work we will do to reach these goals, but also the work we will not do.

And so we have ICO25. A vision of the regulator we want to be, and the world we want to shape. And a practical plan of how we get there.

ICO25 sets out how we can save UK businesses more than £100m through greater certainty and more targeted support, and with specific recognition of the challenges the public sector faces.

It recognises that information rights are about people – relationships, trust, equality, democracy and dignity.

And it recognises the importance of freedom of information, and the need for fundamental change to ensure we have transparency fit for the modern world.

Our work is informed by you: business, government, civil society and the people our work affects. I heard your views throughout my listening tour. And I heard too the views of ICO staff, and the voices of the people we want to empower. We won’t stop listening. 

We’ve got a lot to do in the next three years. But the ambitions set out in this plan will ensure we’re busy with the right work: making the difference to people’s lives.

- John Edwards, Information Commissioner.