The Scottish Government average response time to Freedom of Information requests: FOI release

Information requested

Broken down per month for the past 3 years:

The average time for the Scottish Government to respond to a freedom of information request. (This is the period of time from when the request was received until the response was issued from the Scottish Government)

Response

Year	Month	Average number of days taken from receipt to issued response (Calendar)	Average number of days taken from receipt to issued response (FOISA)
2018	November	13	9
	December	25	15
2019	January	22	16
	February	23	16
	March	20	14
	April	23	16
	May	23	16
	June	21	15
	July	20	15
	August	24	17
	September	24	17
	October	23	16
	November	23	16
	December	25	16
2020	January	25	18
	February	25	18
	March	31	22
	April	40	27
	May	31	22
	June	26	19
	July	25	17
	August	24	17
	September	25	18
	October	19	14
	November	6	5

For the purposes of responding to this request I have assumed that the term 'Freedom of information request' refers both to requests responded to under FOISA and requests responded to under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRS).

The data I have provided begins on 01 November 2018. At that time the Scottish Government started to transition to a new case management system for the handling of correspondence and formal information requests. No business need was identified to retain information relating to the average time to respond to an FOI/EIR request on our previous case management system. So that was not transitioned and so we do not hold that information. This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that this is not a complete record of issued request responses and that the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested.

I have included two columns, the first is the broken down monthly average of the number of calendar days taken from receipt to response. This count includes non-working days, as in Saturday and Sunday and also the Scottish Bank Holidays. The second column is the average of the number of days taken as per FOISA. This does not include weekends and does not include Scottish Bank Holidays.

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.