Open Innovation Team launches service to provide support on equalities impact assessments

The Government’s Open Innovation Team (OIT) is to launch a new service aimed at helping public bodies to comply with the Public Sector Equalities Duty (PSED).

The OIT said: “Whether or not they decide to carry out an Equalities Impact Assessment (EIA), the Public Sector Equalities Duty places a responsibility on all public bodies to consider the equalities impact of the policy changes they are considering. We know this can sometimes be challenging so we are launching a new service.”

Support will be provided in three ways:

1. Capacity: Teams can commission the Unit to analyse equalities issues, and because the OIT is part of the Civil Service “there is no need for a time consuming procurement process”.
2. Expertise: The team “can engage leading experts on behalf of colleagues, translating their insights and ideas into language that decision makers will understand”.
3. Training: The OIT is developing training to help teams to break down policy problems to understand and answer key equalities questions.

Other services the team said it could offer include support for data visualisation and integrating equalities considerations into policy evaluation and monitoring.