Correspondence/contracts from 11 named companies:FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/18/01235
Date received: 26 April 2018
Date responded: 31 May 2018

Information requested

Any correspondence or contracts between the Scottish Government and {eleven companies}, from 2011 or the earliest possible date to the present.

Subsequently clarified the name of one of those companies and also that if correspondence would exceed the cost limit then provide the details of any contracts entered into by the Scottish Government.

Response

Regarding the part of your request for "any correspondence", while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. The reason for this is that to locate and retrieve that information we would need to conduct a search of all of the records of the Scottish Government. It may help if I explain that we file our information according to the subject matter, not by reference to the names of organisations or individuals with whom we have corresponded. Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example, you could specify the subject matter(s) of the correspondence you are interested in or restrict your request to a specific business area of the Scottish Government, as this would allow us to limit the searches that would require to be conducted. You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner's 'Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs' on his website at: http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx.

Regarding the part of your request for the details of any contracts entered into by the Scottish Government, please refer to the following (all relating to the period from 2011).

Red Tree Research/Survation Ltd/First Opinion Ltd/Pursuit Marketing/Relationship Marketing Ltd/City Park Technology Centre Ltd/Anderson Knight Ltd/BSS Scotland Ltd/Change Recruitment Group/ICM Research Ltd:

A search of our records found no Scottish Government contracts with these companies.

M&ORI (also known as Ipsos MORI)

A search of our records identified the following contracts awarded since April 2011 to this company:

Award Date	Contract Name	Award Value
June 2011	An Evaluation of Local Authority Hub Working to Prevent Homelessness	£33,020
June 2011	Scottish Household Survey 2012- 2015 NOTE 1	£8,009,695
September 2011	Review of the Scottish Alcohol Sponsorship Guidelines	£23,332
January 2012	Behaviour in Scottish Schools (Research Project)	£128,527
February 2012	SME Access to Finance (Survey)	£55,398
January 2013	Data Linkage - Deliberative Research	£39,820
March 2013	Testing canvass form for the registration of young voters	£20,982
May 2013	Public acceptability of data sharing between the public and private sectors for statistical or research purposes	£73,590
August 2013	Reducing Reoffending Change Fund Evaluation	£150,700 (est.)
November 2013	An Assessment of the Impact of the Living Wage in Scotland	£39,255
February 2014	Scottish Agricultural Tenant Farmers Survey	£54,600
February 2014	RPID Customer Satisfaction Survey to Inform Futures Programme	£27,600
February 2014	Scottish Agricultural Landlord Survey	£47,100
May 2014	Regulation of the energy efficiency of private sector housing	£46,020
July 2014	Focus group research on the future of the benefits system in Scotland	£19,563
August 2014	Views and experiences of tenant farmers and landlords on the functioning of the tenancy system	£79,800
August 2014	Data Review in support of the Commonwealth Games 2014 Legacy Evaluation	£15,000
August 2014	Scottish Schools Adolescent Lifestyle and Substance Use Survey (SALSUS)	£246,921
July 2015	SALSUS: Creating a simplified dataset for time series analysis	£12,000
August 2015	Evaluation of the Impact of the Implementation of "Teaching Scotland's Future"	£89,137
September 2015	Scottish Crime and Justice Survey	£5,268,499
February 2016	Evaluation of the "Caledonian System" Offender Programme	£44,996
May 2016	The Costs of Childcare Provision for Private Sector and Not-for-Profit Partner Providers	£29,700
July 2016	Behaviour in Scottish Schools	£127,988
August 2016	Scottish Public Opinion Monitor (Cyber Resilience)	£10,800
August 2016	Research on the Drivers & Barriers to Uptake of Early Learning & Childcare	£24,975
September 2016	Young People in Scotland Survey 2016	£19,775
December 2016	Evaluation of the Scottish Baby Box Pilot	£37,000
March 2017	Evaluation of the "Moving Forward: Making Changes" Sex Offender Programme	£50,000
August 2017	Review of the Aberdeen Problem-Solving Approach	£35,000
October 2017	Scottish Household Survey 2018-2021 NOTE 2	£15,600,000
November 2017	Contribution of EU27 workers to social care sectors	£44,650
January 2018	Public Perceptions of Serious Organised Crime - Survey	£9,850
February 2018	Social Capital - composite and dashboard measurement	£14,900
April 2018	The Drivers and Barriers to Uptake of ELC amongst 2 year olds	£24,975
April 2018	12 Month Review of the Stop and Search Code of Practice	£39,950

NOTE 1 Title of contract as awarded. The contract contained optional extension periods (which were later exercised) for years 2016 and 2017. "Award value" excludes the value of these optional extensions. The out-turn value of the contract was £12,379,484.

NOTE 2 Title of contract as awarded. The contract contains optional extension periods for years 2022 and 2023. "Award value" includes the value of these optional extensions.

Methodology and Caveats

In order to provide you with this information, we have conducted a search of our primary information source for the contract awards made by the Scottish Government (namely, the database of contract award notifications which forms part of the Public Contracts Scotland system). Where no contracts were found by this method, it was generally possible to double-check such a "nil result" by means of a search of our electronic records management system (ERDM) – albeit not with complete certainty where the company name is also a commonly used phrase, such as "relationship marketing". For Ipsos MORI, however, it should be noted that the high number of contracts ruled out this method of verification. In the specific case of Ipsos MORI, therefore, it is possible that there may exist some further contracts (likely to be of lower value and hence below the various thresholds requiring the recording of contracts within PCS) which may not have been identified by this methodology.

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