Number of FOIs submitted to SG requesting FM correspondence: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for:

How many FOIs have been submitted to the Scottish Government in 2019 requesting Nicola Sturgeon's emails or correspondence as a whole i.e. including letters, phone calls, other types of communication? As an example, this could be done by searching for "Nicola Sturgeon" and "emails" within the Scottish Government's FOI tracker.

In how many of the Scottish Government's responses to those FOI requests in 2019 was a search conducted of the address "nicola.sturgeon@snp.org" specifically?

Response

49 FOI requests were submitted in 2019 requesting Nicola Sturgeon’s emails or correspondence as a whole.

In relation to searches being conducted of Nicola.sturgeon@snp.org. To be clear, given the separation between government and party, Scottish Government officials would not normally be expected to send information about government business to (or receive such information from) an e-mail account ending with @snp.org. Although in rare instances, communication that is in fact Government business may be forwarded from a parliamentary or party account to be dealt with. I understand you have made 6 requests about emails between various categories of Scottish Government officials and Ministers and Nicola.sturgeon@snp.org.

Searches were, of course, made in these cases for the email address specified. We considered your FOI’s with reference numbers 201900002812 and 201900002907 to be out of scope of this request, in that you asked for the volume of e-mails received to a specific e-mail address ending in @snp.org, rather than e-mails or correspondence as a whole. However, relevant searches were conducted in those cases for the time period specified and as you know no information sent to, or received from such email addresses, was found, other than for 201900002907.

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.