Education Scotland plans and strategy documents around ICT: FOI release

Information requested

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 presents the structure of the IT department, please include name and job titles. If this cannot be sent, please work towards a structure with job titles.

3. ICT Annual or Business Plan - Like 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

Question 1
Here is our digital strategy: Education Scotland: Digital Strategy

Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. 

Question 2
Our organisation chart for Digital Services is documented in Annex B – the boxes shaded grey are vacancies. This is accurate at February 2022. Please note that the organisation is made up of permanent and interim staff (or staff provided through our technical resources contract). No names have been shown as the names of members of staff below Senior Civil Servant are not included in responses to Freedom of Information requests.

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.

Question 3 and 4
We do not publish an annual business plan separately for Digital Services.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the information you have requested for ICT Annual or Business Plan is not held. This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested. Budgets for the next financial year 2022-23 have not yet been finalised for Digital Services. The costs for our biggest systems/projects – Glow and SWAN – for 2020-21 can be found at page 85 of Education Scotland’s Annual Accounts: Education Scotland – Annual Report 2020-21.

The 2021-2022 forecasted spend excluding staff costs for our largest digital systems/projects is as follows:

Digital Project	2021-22 Forecasted Spend (£m)
SWAN	1,205
Glow	3,295

The 2021-2022 forecasted spend for our Digital Transformation Project is as follows:

Digital Project	2021-22 Forecasted Spend (£m)
Digital Transformation (Capital budget)	4,743

It should be noted that at this point, these are forecasted figures. The exact spend for these digital projects will be confirmed when our annual accounts are published in the summer of 2022.

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 at the following link: https://education.gov.scot/who-we-are/policies-and-information/Procurement.

Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. 

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.

Annex A - FOI 202200281548 - Information released

File type

1 page PDF

File size

71.8 kB

Annex B - FOI 202200281548 - Information released

File type

1 page PDF

File size

91.1 kB