Science and Advice for Scottish Agriculture (SASA) information on Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for a response to five questions relating to ‘Staff, training, and procurement on Equality, Diversity, and Inclusivity’ in SASA.

1) The number of roles across all components of your operations, directorates and management structures, expressed in numbers of full-time employees (FTE), that are mainly or exclusively focussed on issues of equality, diversity, or inclusivity. This information should encompass all roles based in central offices, as well as those based around the country.

Roles meeting this description could include (amongst other guises) “Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Officer” (EDI) or “Diversity and Inclusion Project Managers”. Please break down, if possible, the number of roles per component part of your operations.

For all roles meeting this description, please also provide, in order of preference, either a) the salary of these roles, b) the pay band of these roles, or c) the combined total salary of these roles. Please provide the information that is most in accordance with your data processing practices.

Please also advise if there are any plans to hire further staff in these areas within the next 18 months, and the roles/pay bands that they are likely to occupy.

2) With the same criteria as above, please provide the number of internal training courses attended by staff which pertain to the issues encompassed by equality, diversity or inclusivity. Please include the name of the courses, the number of attendees, and the duration of the course.

3) Please, if possible, provide details of any internal EDI practices and networks, including the number of individuals who are members of such networks.

4) Please provide details of any external contractors brought in by the department to conduct training, advice, or guidance on issues relating to EDI. Where applicable this should include costs and associated manhours.

5) Please provide details of how equality, diversity and inclusivity is included in your procurement practices, the relative weight afforded to these considerations, and the current value of contracts in which EDI considerations was a part of the procurement process.

Response

Please find answers to your 5 questions below.

1) There are no full time EDI roles, or roles that are mainly focussed on EDI, in SASA. There are no plans to hire staff with a full, or majority, role in EDI in the next 18 months.

2) SASA have not run any internal training courses on EDI. SASA is a division of the Scottish Government and online EDI training is available to Scottish Government staff. Completion rates of this training are not held by SASA as a division but would be included in statistics you may have requested from the Scottish Government. A 30 minute online “Inclusive culture” e-learning course is part of the annual mandatory training for all staff therefore the expectation is that all staff (ca 182) will have completed this training.

3) SASA has a local Equality, Diversity and Inclusion committee comprised of 7 members. The committee meets for one hour every two months and provides comment on divisional practices when invited, monitors diversity changes and highlights relevant national and international days (up to three per year) such as Women and Girls in Science and Engineering.

4) No external contractors have been brought in to provide training, advice of guidance relating to EDI at SASA.

5) For procurement practices, SASA follow the standard Scottish Government Procurement Manual. More information regarding Scottish Government procurement policies can be found on the SG's website, Scottish procurement: policy manual - gov.scot

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.

FOI 202500455206 - Information released - Annex

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