Veritau’s graduate trainee stories: progression to Senior Information Governance Officer
8 March 2022
Veritau has run a successful graduate training scheme for many years. We’re asking some of our trainees what attracted them to the scheme, how their experience has been, and what they have learnt.
Katherine joined Veritau in 2018 as a Trainee Information Governance Officer after graduating with a History degree from the University of Leicester.
Having completed her professional qualifications and progressing to Information Governance Officer, an opportunity came up for Katherine to progress further to a senior officer.
She now heads up our Information Access team, and tells us about her journey to get there.
History degree to trainee in information governance
“Information governance wasn’t a field that I had any specific knowledge of before I joined Veritau, but I found that it was the perfect discipline for me to use and develop my skill set.
My history degree provided me with skills in oral and written communication, presentation, research, and analysis of sources and data. These are some of the key skills that Veritau looks for in graduates.
I completed three professional qualifications as part of the graduate training scheme: BCS Freedom of Information, BCS Data Protection and BCS Information Security Management Principles.”
Progression Senior Information Governance Officer
“Since February 2021 I’ve been in my current role as a Senior Information Governance Officer. My main area of responsibility lies with Veritau’s Information Access team.
The day to day aspects of my role are extremely varied but mainly focus around supporting the Information Access team with the delivery of our services.
I’m also involved in some consultancy work looking at broader aspects of privacy compliance with our clients. The work is really rewarding and I’m lucky that I work with a wonderful team of likeminded professionals in a supportive and friendly environment.
With information governance matters, there’s often room for debate and interpretation of the law, I really appreciate the breadth of knowledge we have in our team to have those discussions and deliver the best outcomes for our clients.”
Specialist area – information access
“In the Information Access team, we provide advice and support to our clients around their obligations with Freedom of Information requests and the right of access.
We’re providing a really valuable service not only to our public sector clients, but to the individual service users who are able to exercise their data protection rights. This is especially the case with the requests we support relating to care leavers.
Care leavers refers to adults who have spent time in care – accessing their care records can be an extremely valuable contribution to the memory of their early lives. This is a really rewarding part of the job.”
