Business Analyst

Job summary

As a Business Analyst within our Transformation team, you will play a pivotal role in helping the organisation deliver meaningful change and continuous improvement. Working across a range of transformation initiatives, you will analyse current processes, identify opportunities for improvement, and help shape practical solutions that deliver value for colleagues and customers.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is the independent regulator of information rights. In a data-driven world, we provide advice, guidance, and support to organisations enabling compliance with their obligations, as well as protecting individuals and their personal data.

As an employer, we are passionate about making a positive difference to the lives and careers of our people, and we empower you to be curious, impactful, collaborative and respectful.

Job description

Business Analysts play a critical role in enabling successful transformation by providing insight, analysis, and structured thinking across the full change lifecycle. Working as part of an integrated Transformation & Delivery (T&D) team, Business Analysts collaborate closely with Transformation Leads, Change, Delivery, and PMO colleagues to ensure solutions are evidence-based, impactful, and deliver sustainable outcomes.

Business Analysts are central to ensuring that transformation is well-defined, evidence-led, and deliverable, acting as a critical bridge between strategy, design, and execution. Through integrated working within the T&D team, they help ensure change is not only delivered—but successfully embedded and sustained.

Key responsibilities:

Strategic Transformation Support

• Apply systems thinking to understand how processes, systems, and behaviours interact across the organisation

• Identify interdependencies, risks, and wider impacts of change initiatives

• Support shaping of transformation opportunities through insight and analysis

Discovery & Analysis

• Lead current state analysis, including process mapping, customer journeys, and ways of working

• Gather and document business, operational, technical, and user requirements

• Conduct root cause analysis to identify underlying issues rather than symptoms

• Analyse data to identify trends, risks, and opportunities to inform decision-making

• Undertake impact assessments (operational, technical, people, regulatory)

• Support benefits modelling, baseline measurement, and KPI definition

• Identify pain points, inefficiencies, and opportunities for improvement

Design & Solution Development

• Support the design of future state processes, operating models, and solutions

• Work collaboratively with Delivery and Change teams to ensure solutions are practical, adoptable, and aligned to business needs

• Ensure stakeholder needs are understood and reflected in “as is” and “to be” process designs.

Delivery Enablement

• Working with the Transformation Leads, support delivery teams by refining and clarifying requirements throughout business case and process development.

• Contribute to prioritisation decisions based on value, impact, and capacity

• Track and support benefits realisation during delivery

• Analyse lessons learned and support identification of opportunities for standardisation

Continuous Improvement

• Monitor performance trends and conduct root cause trend analysis to identify recurring issues

• Support process optimisation and continuous improvement initiatives

• Review benefit realisation and contribute to ongoing enhancements

• Identify opportunities to improve consistency, efficiency, and customer outcomes

Governance, Reporting & Assurance

• Contribute to reporting, assurance, and decision-making processes through high-quality analysis

• Provide clear, evidence-based insights to inform governance forums

• Support tracking of performance, risks, and benefits across initiatives

Integrated Team Working (T&D Model)

• Work collaboratively across Transformation Leads, Change, Delivery, and PMO as part of a joined-up, integrated service

• Act as a connector between business needs and delivery teams, ensuring alignment and shared understanding

• Champion cross-functional working, knowledge sharing, and consistency of approach

• Represent business areas or strategic domains as required, feeding insights both into and out of the T&D function

Person specification

Essential criteria assessed at application stage:

• Professional accreditation in business analysis or change (e.g., BCS, IIBA, PMI-PBA) and/or Lean/Six Sigma practitioner or equivalent demonstrable experience.

• Significant experience leading business analysis on complex programmes spanning multiple functions/teams, including discovery, requirements, process/service design and benefits realisation.

• Demonstrable experience of practice leadership (e.g., setting standards, quality assurance/peer review, mentoring/coaching, building communities of practice, or capability development).

• Exceptional stakeholder engagement and influencing skills at senior level, with the ability to shape decisions, challenge constructively, and translate complexity into clear options and recommendations

• Evidence of delivering measurable outcomes (e.g., efficiencies, risk reduction, service performance improvements or customer experience uplift) and of improving how analysis is performed through coaching, standards or governance.

• Advanced analytical skills, including the ability to identify root causes, gaps, duplication and control weaknesses, and to work with subject matter experts to develop options, assess impacts and recommend implementable solutions.

• Experience supporting prioritisation, planning and dependency management (e.g., demand shaping, roadmap planning, benefits tracking) and strong working knowledge of Microsoft 365 and analysis tooling.

• Excellent knowledge and demonstrable ability of Microsoft 365 applications.

Essential criteria assessed during interview:

• Significant experience leading business analysis on complex programmes spanning multiple functions/teams, including discovery, requirements, process/service design and benefits realisation.

• Exceptional stakeholder engagement and influencing skills at senior level, with the ability to shape decisions, challenge constructively, and translate complexity into clear options and recommendations.

• Strong analytical and critical-thinking capability, including experience with service/process redesign, customer journeys, target operating models, information/data flows, and benefits/OKR definition.

• Evidence of delivering measurable outcomes (e.g., efficiencies, risk reduction, service performance improvements or customer experience uplift) and of improving how analysis is performed through coaching, standards or governance.

• Proven expertise in shaping and communicating target states (blueprints/roadmaps) and tailoring analysis approaches to different delivery contexts (project, product, Agile and hybrid), ensuring the right level of detail and alignment to organisational change.

• Advanced analytical skills, including the ability to identify root causes, gaps, duplication and control weaknesses, and to work with subject matter experts to develop options, assess impacts and recommend implementable solutions

• Experience supporting prioritisation, planning and dependency management (e.g., demand shaping, roadmap planning, benefits tracking) and strong working knowledge of Microsoft 365 and analysis tooling.

• Experience of communicating, negotiating and influencing strategic change.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £44,297, Information Commissioner's Office contributes £12,832 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).Please visit ico.jobs for full details, including salary and benefits.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

Equality, diversity, and inclusion

The ICO is committed to promoting and enhancing equality, diversity, and inclusion. We are focused on developing a workforce that is representative of the communities we serve and together we are building an inclusive workplace where all of our colleagues have the opportunity to make a real difference. We are championing this through our Equality Diversity and Inclusion Board together with a number of staff networks. Read more about our commitment on our website.

Candidates with a disability who meet the minimum criteria for this vacancy will be invited to interview as part of the ICO’s commitment to the Disability Confident Scheme.

As part of the ICO’s commitment to our EDI objectives and creating a workplace that represents the communities and societies we serve, we guarantee an interview to candidates who declare they identify as belonging from an ethnic minority background and who meet the minimum criteria for this vacancy

If you are disabled or have an impairment and require an alternative application method, please email the HR team at recruitment@ico.org.uk

Closing Date

Please submit your CV and cover letter by 23:59, Thursday 20 August. Your cover letter should be no more than 1,000 words and should clearly demonstrate how you meet the essential criteria for the role.

We may close this vacancy early if we receive a high volume of applications. To ensure your application is considered, we encourage you to apply as soon as possible. If you require any reasonable adjustments to support your application, please contact us at recruitment@ico.org.uk.

In the event of a high volume of applications, we may not be able to invite all candidates who meet the minimum criteria to interview. However, we encourage you stay in touch and apply for future roles that match your interests.

All candidates who meet the minimum criteria and apply in-line with our guaranteed interview scheme for disabled and ethnic minority applicants will be interviewed.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Medical

Successful candidates will be expected to have a medical.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

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Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : recruitment@ico.org.uk
• Email : recruitment@ico.org.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : recruitment@ico.org.uk