Case study - developing our EQIA process

Published: 28 April 2023
Freedom of information class: How we deliver functions and services

As a public sector organisation, we have a legal duty to equality impact assess our policies and any developments in our organisation.

As a public sector organisation, we have a legal duty to equality impact assess our policies and any developments in our organisation. As an outcome in our last Equality & Diversity Mainstreaming Report, we committed to reviewing and improving our process for this.

We agreed that EQIAs should be coordinated by a single business area. Responsibility for this was given to our Information Governance (IG) team, building on their experience of other assessment processes. This was key to ensuring that the process was mainstreamed alongside other similar activity.

We initiated a project to develop and then embed an end-to-end process for conducting EQIAs in RoS. We wanted this to be both effective and efficient. The project team included colleagues from Information Governance as well as Learning and Development. Members of the project team attended a one-day training course delivered by Equality & Diversity UK (ED UK) on coordinating EQIAs.

Colleagues new to carrying out EQIAs often note being unsure of where to start or how to take it forward. We realised that support for colleagues was going to be critical to making this a success. We developed guidance and training materials and there is a template for colleagues to use. We have used our communication channels to keep colleagues updated on our progress.

We also briefed key stakeholders on the process to raise awareness and answer questions. This included People & Change, Programme Management Office, EDI Colleague Forum, EDI Steering Group, Policy and Practice Group, Change Champions, Product and Business Analyst Communities of Practice, and Service Design/UX teams.

We have seen an increase already in the number of EQIAs being carried out. Plans are in place to continue this momentum and ensure that we have EQIAs for all of our key policies, and developments in RoS.


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