Contact nominations and responsibilities

Director of finance role

The Director of finance, or equivalent senior named officer acting as ‘senior responsible officer’ for the NFI, has key responsibilities to ensure the statutory requirements for bodies participating in NFI are met, as follows:

• nominate a key contact
• ensure the key contact has access to the matches (via the secure NFI software) when they become available (please refer to the timetable)
• ensure that the key contact fulfils all data protection requirements

Key contact role

The key contact will be responsible for:

• fulfilling data protection requirements. The key contact should be in direct communication with their organisation’s data protection officer or person with equivalent responsibility
• ensuring that the data formats guidance and data specifications are adhered to
• nominating appropriate users to upload data submissions. This should be the person with the most knowledge of the system in question
• nominating appropriate users to investigate the matches
• nominating appropriate users to also act as point of contact for other bodies about a match (preferred dataset contact)
• coordinating and monitoring the overall exercise
• ensuring outcomes from the investigation of matches is recorded on the web application promptly and accurately

Further information on the key contact role is provided in the ‘key contact’ online training module within the NFI web application.
In small organisations, it is understandable that one person may fulfil the key contact, data submission, dataset contact and investigation roles.

Data submission

The user responsible for submission of the data should ensure that data:

• meets the specifications
• contains a header row
• is in the correct format
• is submitted by the specified method (in other words, the data file upload facility (DFU))
• is received by the required deadline(s)

Investigating the matches

The key contact will set up a user or number of users with access to the NFI web application so that they can review and investigate the matches. The user may also be responsible for responding to enquiries from other matched bodies if this role is delegated to them by the key contact, for example, preferred dataset contact.

How contact information is used

Key contact and user information is used to populate the ‘authority code’ look-up facility within the NFI web application. This look-up facility provides contact details for each matched body so there can be liaison over matches, where applicable. Consequently, the nomination of data set contacts and a preferred dataset contact is encouraged where someone other than the key contact is responsible for investigating specific matches and dealing with queries from other participating bodies.