The purpose, strategic enduring objectives, values and causes we worked towards delivering were:

Our purpose

The ICO exists to empower you through information. We empower you:

• as a member of the public to confidently contribute to a thriving society and sustainable economy. 
• to confidently plan, invest, innovate and grow your organisation.
• by promoting openness and transparency by public bodies.
• to hold us to account for the difference we make when enforcing the laws we oversee.

Further details about our purpose are available on our website.

Our strategic enduring objectives

1. Safeguard and empower people.
2. Empower responsible innovation and sustainable economic growth.
3. Promote openness, transparency and accountability.
4. Driven by our values, we’ll continuously develop the ICO’s culture, capability and capacity.

Further details about our strategic enduring objectives are available on our website. 

Part B of the report includes information about the organisational structure we’ve put in place to achieve these objectives and the associated key risks we’ve identified.

Our values 

• Curious
• Collaborative
• Impactful
• Inclusive

Further details about our values are available on our website.

Our causes

To help clarify focus, the Executive Team (ET) has agreed on three organisational causes. Where we talk about our work to deliver these causes within this report, you’ll see the relevant icon. 

Children’s privacy: our children’s privacy work currently focuses on:

• social media;
• video sharing platforms; and 
• mobile games platforms.

This reflects the scale of adoption and use among children and the volume of personal information involved. These platforms must act in the best interests of children when capturing and processing their information. We will continue to prioritise interventions where we:

• find that these organisations fail to conform to our Children’s code; or
• see that children’s information is (or has the potential to be) misused. 

This will ensure that children benefit from an age-appropriate online experience.

AI and biometrics: we support public and private sectors to deliver innovative AI and biometrics technologies that comply with data protection law and guidance. The rapid development and proliferation of these technologies pose novel risks, requiring us to provide regulatory certainty to guide their development and deployment. We’ll work with key stakeholders to:

• provide this certainty; 
• build public trust in these technologies; and 
• prevent harm arising from their use.

Online tracking: our online tracking strategy sets out how we expect organisations to give people meaningful control over how they are tracked online. It sets out how we’ll promote compliance with the law to obtain a fairer online tracking ecosystem for people and business by:

• clarifying how the law applies and our expectations in guidance and other publications;
• engaging with industry to shape a more compliant and privacy-oriented ecosystem;
• scrutinising the compliance of organisations across the online tracking ecosystem; and
• investigating organisations that don’t comply and enforcing the law.

We will be consulting on a new corporate strategy from 2026/27. Further information about this strategy will be published on our website during summer 2026.