Meetings between Education Scotland and Exception UK: FOI release

Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.


FOI reference: FOI/17/01733
Date received: 26 July 2017
Date responded: 21 August 2017

Information requested

Details of all meetings held between the Head of Digital Services at Education Scotland and Exception UK in the past six months, including the names of meeting participants and the scope of the discussions. Details requested should include meetings held at any premises or location, plus the scope of any contracts or procurements.

Response

Education Scotland is exploring the future digitisation of the Scottish education inspection and review process. An important part of this strategy is to assess the current and future business model(s) to determine how best digital can support current and future inspection and review requirements.

To achieve this objective, Education Scotland formally tendered a statement of requirements, utilising a competitive procurement framework, covering the following high level scope:

Resourcing capability

  1. Establish interim business analysis and technical consultancy capability across Education Scotland.

  2. Plan and execute corporate business analysis of the inspection and review business model.

Deliverables:

Gap Analysis.

A thorough examination of the current process, or processes, used throughout the inspection and review function across Scotland, for use in determining future business change.

Business Analysis documentation.

Deliver output documentation that covers the findings of the business analysis review, the recommendations for digital service improvement, operating model and any other operational transformations identified that can deliver to the wider corporate strategy.

High level functional and data requirements, including future (visual) prototype of the digital solution target

The engagement is to identify the change required for the digital service model for business change, ensure that the high level functional requirements for any future systems development (should such development be considered in house) or procurement (should existing commercially available technology be appropriate) are captured in the outputs of our work.

Exception secured the contract, and deliverables were managed within Education Scotland's Digital Services Team (managed by the Head of Digital Services).

All project meeting details between Exception and the Head of Digital Services are outlined in the Annex (covering six months).

However, while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information requested because an exemption under section 38(1)(b), personal information, of FOISA applies to some of the information requested.

The reasons why this exemption applies are explained below.

Reasons for not providing information

Section 38(1)(b) - personal information

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to some information. This exemption applies because the information is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 1998.

This exemption is not subject to the 'public interest test', so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses

FOI-17-01733 Meeting details and venues - information.pdf

Contact

Please quote the FOI reference

Central Enquiry Unit
Email: ceu@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000

The Scottish Government
St Andrew's House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG

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