Policy Officer spend across Scottish Government units: FOI release

Information requested

1. By financial year from 2018-19 to present, expense on employing Policy Officers broken down by Scottish Government unit.
2. By end of financial year from 2018-19 to present, number of Policy Officers employed by the Scottish Government, broken down by Directorate, Division, Branch, and Unit.

Response

Due to the volume of data in scope the information requested has been attached in Annex A: number and costs of Policy Officers and relates to Scottish Government Core Directorates only.

The data represents a breakdown of staff with job titles that include the term ‘policy officer’ rather than staff who are ‘policy officers’ which is not a job we recognise within our professions framework.

The information provided for 2024-25 relates to published workforce statistics from September 2024.

This is because from October 2024 we have changed how we record this information and we now record the detail of the profession framework rather than job titles. This means while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested from October 2024-March 2025. This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested for the time period October 2024-March 2025.

Staff identified are based on the data as at 31 March at the end of the financial year, and salaries are as at 31 March (or 30 September for the 2024-2025 financial year).

In relation to question 1, we have interpretated “Units” as Directorates as the Scottish Government isn’t broken down into “Units”. In line with Cabinet Office guidance, as set out in the Government Financial Reporting Manual, where there is only one policy officer within the Directorate we apply the normal convention for reporting the personal salary information by providing the information in £5k salary bands.

The information provided within this FOI response differs slightly to the same information provide in FOI 202400443951. The reason for the continued small differences in costs (of a combined £2,155 over 6.5 years) between this FOI and the earlier release, relates to an issue with data merging where some costs for incomplete records were incorrectly excluded from the previous final outputs. The data within this FOI response therefore supersedes the data provided within the previous FOI response.

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 202500459093 - Information Released - Annex A

File type

Excel document

File size

104.7 kB