Freedom of Information request statistics: FOI release

Information requested

1. Over the past five years how many FoI requests have been submitted? Please can I have this broken down by year? (So for the years of 2019, 20, 21, 22, 23. If financial years are used, please may I have the data for this financial year to the date this has been submitted.)

2. Over the past five years how many FoI requests have been answered? Please can I have this broken down by year in the same format above?

3. In the same format as above, how many were rejected?

4. Of these, in the same format, how many were rejected because the information was not held centrally?

5. Finally, in the same format as the other questions, how many were asking for informal communications? Of these how many were approved and how many were rejected?

Response

For the purposes of responding to this request we have interpreted that the term ‘FoI request’ refers to information requests that have been responded to under Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOI(S)A) and under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRS).

Also, we have interpreted ‘rejected’ to mean FOI requests that were valid but refused in their entirety on exemption grounds and have not included requests that were invalid for such reasons as having no name provided/fake name/contactable information.

Noted below is most of the information you requested in the format you asked for. While our aim is to provide information wherever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. This is because Scottish Government transitioned to a new case management system for the handling of correspondence and we did not routinely monitor the number of FOI requests previous to 2020. This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not hold the information.

1. Over the past five years how many FoI requests have been submitted? Please can I have this broken down by year? (So for the years of 2019, 20, 21, 22, 23. If financial years are used, please may I have the data for this financial year to the date this has been submitted.)

2019 - Section 17(1) Information not held.
2020 - 4342
2021 - 5513
2021 - 4931

2. Over the past five years how many FoI requests have been answered? Please can I have this broken down by year in the same format above?

2019 - Section 17(1) Information not held.
2020 - 3121
2021 - 4160
2022 - 4131
2023 - 4454

3. In the same format as above, how many were rejected?

2019 - Section 17(1) Information not held.
2020 - 42
2021 - 142
2022 - 113
2023 - 118

4. Of these, in the same format, how many were rejected because the information was not held centrally?

We have interpreted ‘centrally’ to mean information held within core Scottish Government.

2019 - Section 17(1) Information not held.
2020 - 42
2021 - 142
2022 - 113
2023 - 118

5. Finally, in the same format as the other questions, how many were asking for informal communications? Of these how many were approved and how many were rejected?

We have interpreted ‘informal communications’ to mean mobile messaging apps such as WhatsApp. You can find further information on our polices on mobile messaging apps here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/mobile-messaging-apps-usage-and-policy-guidance/

To provide the data for your request we completed a search of all requests submitted within the time period, and then limited these to only include those that made reference to the terms “WhatsApp” and “Informal Communications”.

2019 - Section 17(1) Information not held.
2020 - 1
2021 - 0
2022 - 1
2023 - 23

Year	Request Approved	Requests Refused	Total
2019	Section 17(1)	Section 17(1)	Section 17(1)
2020	1	0	1
2021	0	0	0
2022	1	0	1
2023	23	2	25

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.