Government staff dedicated to dealing with Freedom of Information requests: FOI release

Information requested

• The number of Scottish Government staff dedicated to dealing with freedom of information requests for the last five financial years.
• The total salary costs for Scottish Government staff dedicated to dealing with freedom of information requests for the last five financial years.
• The number of external consultants e.g. legal and media resources used to deal with freedom of information requests for the last five years.
• The total cost of external consultant resources used to deal with freedom of information requests for the last five years.

Response

I include below some of the information you requested :

In response to your first two questions that asked for the number of Scottish Government staff and the salary costs of staff dedicated to dealing with freedom of information requests for the last five financial years, I have detailed both in the tables below.

The data on salaries represents a team called the FOI unit and is an estimate, as when a member of staff leaves the team to take up a new post within the Scottish Government, their salary is billed to theFOI unit for the remainder of the month that they left in. The staff working in the FOI Unit are dedicated to working on FOI but are not responsible for answering requests across the Scottish Government. The FOI unit has a role in the allocation of requests and provide advice to colleagues on the handling of a request, review or appeals. This team also has a role in FOI improvement and policy and therefore, solely work on FOI related matters.

Financial Year	Total Salary Bill
2016	£172,005.66
2017	£268,467.16
2018	£436,520.86
2019	£519,643.64
2020	£481,104.48
2021	£539,020.42
Financial Year	Total number of individuals who were in the FOI unit within the year
2016	8
2017	14
2018	16
2019	16
2020	19
2021	17

The Scottish Government operate a casehandling model whereby each individual team across the organisation can receive an FOI that is relevant to their business area, and they will allocate it to the most appropriate person to answer. This individual will have other responsibilities in addition to FOI and while we aim to allocate to an experienced casehandler, this is not always possible and any colleague below Senior Civil Service could be allocated an FOI.

In response to your third and fourth questions that ask for The number of external consultants e.g. legal and media resources and the total cost of external consultant resources used to deal with freedom of information requests for the last five years:

We do not hold the information you have requested as when a consultant bills us, the type of work registered is at a high level and therefore, does not specify FOI related services. We could ask each individual business area within the Scottish Government for the consultants they have used in the past 5 years but as it will not be reflected in the billing, we cannot retrieve the numbers of consultants and the costs associated with their FOI services accurately. However, the primary source of advice for all areas of the Scottish Government on the handling of FOI requests is the FOI Unit. The FOI Unit do not use external consultants. This is a formal notice under 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not hold the information you have requested.

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.