Incident manager
Find out what an incident manager in government does and the skills you need to do the role at each level.
Last updated 30 November 2024 — See all updates
Contents
- — What an incident manager does
- — Incident manager role levels
- — Roles that share incident manager skills
What an incident manager does
Incident managers aim to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible and minimise any adverse effects on business operations. This ensures that the best possible levels of service quality and availability are returned and maintained.
Incident manager role levels
There are 2 incident manager role levels, from incident manager to major incident manager.
The typical responsibilities and skills for each role level are described in the sections below. You can use this to identify the skills you need to progress in your career, or simply to learn more about each role in the Government Digital and Data profession.
1. Incident manager
An incident manager oversees incidents and restores normal operations as quickly as possible, with the least impact on the business or the user.
At this role level, you will:
- work on-site, maintaining the hardware and fixing technical problems as quickly as possible
- provide first-time resolution by troubleshooting and diagnosing or escalating faults (or both) to the major incident managers and problem managers to investigate and resolve
- coach apprentices and share knowledge with team colleagues
Your responsibilities may, in some departments, mirror those of an end user computing engineer.
This role level is often performed at the Civil Service job grade of:
- EO (Executive Officer)
- HEO (Higher Executive Officer)
Skill | Description |
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Asset and configuration management Level: awareness Awareness is the first of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Availability and capacity management Level: awareness Awareness is the first of 4 ascending skill levels |
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Level: awareness Awareness is the first of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Level: working Working is the second of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Level: awareness Awareness is the first of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Level: awareness Awareness is the first of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Level: working Working is the second of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Level: working Working is the second of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Level: working Working is the second of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Level: working Working is the second of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Service management framework knowledge Level: awareness Awareness is the first of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Level: awareness Awareness is the first of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Level: working Working is the second of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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2. Major incident manager
A major incident manager manages significant outages and crises and reports issues to problem management. At this level, you will work closely with workplace services, infrastructure, applications operators and communication managers. In some departments, you may also be the head of service.
This role level is often performed at the Civil Service job grade of:
- SEO (Senior Executive Officer)
- G7 (Grade 7)
Skill | Description |
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Asset and configuration management Level: awareness Awareness is the first of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Availability and capacity management Level: working Working is the second of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Level: working Working is the second of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Level: practitioner Practitioner is the third of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Level: working Working is the second of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Level: working Working is the second of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Level: practitioner Practitioner is the third of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Level: practitioner Practitioner is the third of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Level: working Working is the second of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Level: practitioner Practitioner is the third of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
|
Service management framework knowledge Level: awareness Awareness is the first of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
|
Level: working Working is the second of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Level: practitioner Practitioner is the third of 4 ascending skill levels |
You can:
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Roles that share incident manager skills
Updates
Published 7 January 2020
Last updated 30 November 2024
30 November 2024
- The skill 'asset and configuration management' has been updated. The level descriptions were edited to improve clarity and to better meet the definitions for each level.
- The skill 'availability and capacity management' has been updated. The level descriptions were edited to improve clarity and to better meet the definitions for each level.
- In the 'expert' level description of the 'community collaboration' skill, the second requirement referring to 'understand the pychology of the team and have strong mediation skills' was removed as it is duplicated meaning of other requirements and does not meet framework guidelines for technical skills. This ensures consistency with the rest of the framework and allows for the skill to be shared with roles previously using the 'community collaboration (frontend developer)' skill.
- The skill 'problem management' has been updated to improve clarity and ensure consistency across the framework, allowing it be shared with roles previously using the skill 'problem resolution (data). No change was made to the meaning of skill level descriptions.
- The skill 'service management framework knowledge' has been updated to improve clarity. No change was made in the meaning of the skill level descriptions.
30 August 2024
- The skill level descriptions for 'change management' and 'continuity management' have been updated to improve clarity and ensure consistency across the framework. No change was made to the meaning of skill level descriptions.
7 January 2020
- First published.