Emails between Scottish Government and SNP accounts: FOI release

Information requested

1. The number of instances of correspondence between gov.scot accounts and snp.org accounts in each year from May 2016 to date.
2. The date and time of any correspondence.

Response

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested for 2016 but we are able to provide information for the period of Jan 2017 - Nov 2020. The total number of emails is shown in the table below and the time and date of the correspondence is attached.

It should be noted, however, that these totals include a large number of emails which are part of general mailing lists used for news releases and statements, as well as forwarded copies of already published news stories, such as Press Association articles.

As such, a very large proportion of the email totals are not “correspondence” of the kind suggested by the request, but generic communications. Also, to provide some further context around the figures, on an average day the Scottish Government sends and receives in excess of 280,000 emails, approximating to around one hundred million emails a year.

Year	Number of Emails
2017	8462
2018	6590
2019	7670
2020 (until 3/11)	10018

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 - 202000103596 - Information release

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