Education Scotland IT Internal Plans and Strategy: FOI release

Information requested

Some of the organisation’s information around the internal plans and strategy documents for ICT. The ICT documents from 2019 onwards and the following documents:
1. ICT/IM&T/IS Strategy – The IT department strategy or plans, highlights their current and future objectives.
2. ICT Org Chart – A visual document that present the structure of the IT department, please include name and job titles. If this can’t be sent please work towards a structure with job titles.
3. ICT Annual or Business Plan – Similar to the ICT strategy but is more annually focused.
4. ICT Capital Programme/budget – A document that shows financials budget on current and future projects.

 

Response

 

Questions 1 / 3 / 4
We do not currently have a published Digital Strategy. This is under development and will be published in early summer 2019.
We do not publish an annual business plan separately for Digital Services. We do manage roadmaps for our key services – Glow, Swan, Corporate Systems and our Web Estate. These are currently being updated for 2019-20 and will be finalised when budgets are confirmed.

 

Budgets for the current financial year have not yet been finalised for Digital Services but I can confirm that the costs for our biggest systems/projects – Glow and SWAN – were £2,030,000 and £882,000 respectively per Education Scotland’s annual accounts for 2017-18. Information for 2018-19 will be published as part of our annual accounts in the summer of 2019. A number of contracts are in place for external suppliers involved in the provision of these and other digital related services to Education Scotland. These can be found in our Contracts Register published on the Education Scotland website. You can find this using the following link - https://education.gov.scot/who-we-are/policies-and-information/Procurement.
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 27(1), information intended for future publication of FOISA applies. The reason why this exemption applies is explained in Annex A below.

 

Question 2
Attached at Appendix B the current organisation chart for Digital Services. This is accurate at April 2019. Please note that the organisation is made up of permanent and interim staff. No names have been shown as the names of members of staff below Senior Civil Servant are not included in responses to FOI requests.
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 reason why this exemption applies is explained in Annex A.

 

ANNEX A
 
 
Section 27(1) – information intended for future publication
 
An exemption under section 27(1) of FOISA applies to the Digital Strategy, System Roadmap (in place of annual business plan) and Annual Accounts for 2018-19 information requested because we intend to publish that information by 30 June 2019 which is within 12 weeks of the date of your request.  We consider that it is reasonable to withhold the information until that date, rather than release this information before the planned publication date.   This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’.  Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.  
 
We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption.  We recognise that there is some public interest in release because the future plans for Education Scotland’s digital services is of  relevance to others involved with or interested in education in Scotland and this will be met by our planned publication.  In the meantime, there is a greater public interest in taking the time necessary to ensure the information has been properly collated and checked before it is published as planned.  Also, we see no public interest in disrupting our programme of work to release the information ahead of the intended publication date. Additionally, we have a statutory duty to lay our annual accounts in parliament before these are published.
 
Section 38(1)(b) - personal information
 
An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to some of the information requested (Organisation Chart at Appendix A) because it is personal data of a third party, ie names of individuals, and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018.  
 
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-19-01083 Information Released

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