We are pleased to confirm that the new Welsh Information Governance Toolkit is now available for completion. The Team have been working hard in the background introducing new features and conducting a full review of the question set in readiness for release.
In-line with the latest GP contract, General Practices have until 31st of March 2024 to submit the IG Toolkit.
Question Set
The question set has been consulted on by Information Governance Colleagues, a select set of Practice representatives and NHS England. The question set has been streamlined, with the previous three levels replaced with “Minimum Expectations” and “Expectations Exceeded”.
Minimum Expectations sets out the minimum requirements which form the backbone of the organisation’s IG compliance, it includes questions which are either legal requirements or are set out within the Information Commissioner’s Office Accountability Framework. Additional questions have also been included to bring the Welsh IG Toolkit in line with NHS England’s Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT). Where possible DHCW has provided an assurance statement for practices, this means that there are questions within the DSPT which are excluded from the IG Toolkit question set for GMPs because the assurance statement applies.
The IG Toolkit Team with the support of the DSPT Team are satisfied that the revised question set within the IG Toolkit represents equivalent assurance as completing the DSPT, however this is still awaiting NHS England formal agreement. Once this is received, achieving the minimum expectations within the Welsh IG Toolkit will be viewed as the equivalent assurance as achieving standards met within the DSPT. This is pivotal for the Welsh IG Toolkit and is particularly important to support ongoing projects and programmes, including the rollout of e-prescribing. Practices who achieve the minimum expectations WILL NOT be required to complete the DSPT to access the NHS Spine.
The expectations exceeded row group contains an additional question set which is available to organisations once the minimum expectations have been achieved for that assessment. Expectations exceeded allows organisations to demonstrate that they are working above the minimum in that topic area.
Next Steps
You will be required to register an account on the new platform. This will need to be completed by the organisation administrator, this individual will act as the ‘superuser’ for the organisation. Within the registration process you will be asked to set your ‘organisation profile’ it is strongly recommended this is completed at this stage.
Once your account has been approved, you will receive an email advising you to set your password. Please be aware this may fall into your junk email inbox.
A library of training videos, a comprehensive user guide, and FAQs are available to support you. This includes a full video from start to finish on how to complete your submission along with bitesize videos covering specific functionality, which are a couple of minutes long. It is strongly recommended that you either familiarise yourself with the User Guide or watch the training videos prior to accessing the IG Toolkit. These and other supporting resources along with an offline copy of the question set can be access via the IG Website.
Drop in sessions
The Team will be holding bi-weekly drop-in sessions for the first 10 weeks following the release and then moving on to monthly sessions. The initial sessions will be held between 1-2pm on a Wednesday. The purpose of these sessions will be for users to drop in to ask any questions they may have regarding the new platform, question set, or access other support they may need from the Team.
We plan on discussing a specific topic on the toolkit each session with the first one providing a short demonstration of the platform. The team will be on hand to answer any of your queries and be able to advise on available training resources.
The links to these sessions are provided below and will be made available on the new alerts section within the Toolkit itself. The first five sessions will be on the following dates:
Wednesday 2nd August: 1-2pm Click here to join the meeting
Topic: Registration, logging in, and setting up additional users (1.15pm)
Wednesday 16th August: 1-2pm Click here to join the meeting
Topic: Navigating Caforb, Launch Form, Alerts, Dashboard, Progress and Reports (1.15pm)
Wednesday 30th August: 1-2pm Click here to join the meeting
Topic: Minimum expectations and Expectations exceeded (1.15pm)
Wednesday 13th September: 1-2pm Click here to join the meeting
Topic: Information Governance Action plan and Action Plan Report (1.15pm)
Wednesday 27th September: 1-2pm Click here to join the meeting
Topic: Tool Tips and Supporting Resources (1.15pm)
We would like to take this opportunity to say a massive thank you for your patience whilst the team has been working in the background to make this as seamless of a transition possible. Your feedback is extremely important to us and helps us improve and shape future versions of the IG Toolkit. We encourage you to provide feedback on your experience completing the IG Toolkit via the IG Toolkit Feedback Form.
In the meantime, if you have any questions or queries you can email the Welsh IG Toolkit Team via WelshIGToolkit@wales.nhs.uk where one of the team will be happy to assist.
We look forward to meeting some of you at the drop-in sessions.