Data on Scottish Government devices accessing social media: FOI release

Information requested

How many times have Government devices (computers, laptops, phones, anything that can access the interest) accessed the following links/websites over the past 12 months:

1) https://x.com/conor_matchett

2) https://x.com/kacnutt

3) https://x.com/PeterAdamSmith

4) https://x.com/johncferguson

5) https://wingsoverscotland.com/

6) https://x.com/benjamin_harrop

7) Benjamin Harrop - Summer Camp Counselor - Camp Androscoggin | LinkedIn

Response

The Scottish Government retains six months of Internet access logs. Any responses will only contain information from that time frame.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested for the seven specific URL’s would exceed the upper cost limit of £600, as directory searches of this type have to be run sequentially, not concurrently, and therefore require significant time and staff resource. Under section 12 of FOISA, public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

We have successfully completed searches for two of the seven requested URL’s within the allowed cost limit as follows:

1) https://x.com/conor_matchett – 148 hits
5) https://wingsoverscotland.com – 31,940 hits

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. This could be achieved by narrowing the time or reducing the amount of data requested and would allow us to limit the searches that would require to be conducted. You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner's 'Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs' on his website at:
http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.