Details of governance of the Public Contracts Scotland website: FOI release

Information requested

 

You asked for details of governance of the Public Contracts Scotland website.

 

Response

 

The answers to your questions are:

i) the notices published on PCS are owned and governed entirely by the individual contracting authorities who publish them; the Scottish Government is responsible only for providing the system;

ii) individual contracting authorities are responsible for their own procurement processes and adhering to regulations; 

iii) PCS does not hold a record of incomplete processes where the opportunity notice is cancelled prior to award.  PCS does hold a record of current opportunity notices which have no award at the anticipated award date – however this information is live and changes as buyers continue to publish awards, so I am unable to give you historical details for the period 2017 and 2018;

iv) requests for information are posted as PINs (Prior Information Notices) – some of these will be straightforward requests for information and some will be notifying an opportunity; the only way to differentiate is to read the individual notices.  These are publicly viewable on PCS. You can search for these on PCS via the Browse Notices function then set your parameter under Notice Type as Future Opportunity – tick the Include Archived Contracts button for historical data;

v) PCS does not hold a record of breaches of regulations in relation to procurements which were advertised on PCS, as these are entirely a matter for the individual contracting authorities (see point ii above).  No notices published breached the PCS Terms and Conditions.

 

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.