Ernst and Young contract details: FOI release

Information requested

Details of all contracts the Scottish Government has had with Ernst and Young since 2020. This should include details of the project the contract relates to, the amount of money ScotGov paid EY to carry out the project, the rationale for outsourcing the work rather than the Scottish Government completing it internally, and the final output of the contract.

Response

Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you.

• Some of the information you have requested is available free of charge from the Public Contracts Scotland Contracts Register. I have provided a link to the Public Contracts Scotland website where you can access the Scottish Government Contracts Register. This contains details of all contracts awarded by the Scottish Government to Ernst and Young since 2020, as well as those awarded prior to 2020 - but live during the period indicated in your request. https://www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk/Default.aspx For your information, I have also attached instructions on how to access and navigate the Scottish Government Contracts Register.
• Some of the information you have requested has previously been released by the Scottish Government under FOI reference 202400432841. This was published on 31 October 2024 and, along with the information released is, available free of charge at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202400432841/ This FOI response provided the total spend by the Scottish Government on private consultants, broken down for each of the five financial years from 2018-19 to 2022-23, and includes expenditure with Ernst and Young. In addition to the information contained in this FOI response, we can confirm that the total spend by the Scottish Government with Ernst and Young in financial year 2023-24 was £3,925,555.66.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing some of the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600.

• The spend data for financial year 2024-25 (and the current portion of 2025-26) is currently unavailable from the Procurement Information Hub but will be available for financial year 2024/25 at a future date this calendar year. To try and provide this data at this stage would require a significant manual exercise. Substantial cross-government resource would be required to collate, analyse and redact the raw data from over 50,000 transactions held in multiple systems. It is estimated that the required analysis would equate to a minimum of 1 minute per line therefore far exceeding the upper cost limit of £600.

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.

Should you require the spend data for financial year 2024-25, you may wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example, you could specify the subject matter(s) you are interested in as this may allow us to limit the searches that would require to be conducted. You could also submit another FOI request later this calendar year for the data to be available for financial year 2024-25.

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.

• The Scottish Government does not centrally record the rationale for outsourcing individual projects or hold data such as the final outputs of the related contracts. As the information you have requested is not held in a centralised system, we have assessed your request and estimate that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. A trawl would need to be conducted to identify each contract and business area – to then allow us to reach out for individual areas to manually locate, validate and provide the information requested (requiring extensive additional coordination support). This process would involve identifying appropriate contacts within the organisation, locating documentation, retrieving archived records, and in some cases creating new summaries or explanations regarding the rationale for outsourcing and the final outputs. Given the volume and complexity of the information, we estimate that this along with the coordination support required would exceed the statutory cost limit.

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 can however confirm that, broadly speaking, the general rationale for the Scottish Government to outsource projects is to secure specialist skills, capability and expertise.

Should you require the rationale for outsourcing individual projects and the final outputs of the related contracts, you may wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example, you could specify the specific projects and/or contracts you are interested in as this may 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.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible this is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. The reasons why we don't have some of the information are explained below.

• We are unable to provide detailed spend data linkable to each individual project where Ernst and Young have been awarded contracts by the Scottish Government, as the Scottish Government does not hold this information in our previous finance system.

During the period indicated in your request, the Scottish Government implemented a new Oracle Cloud enterprise resource planning system, replacing our legacy HR and Finance systems. Though the data capture of spend by project/contract remains an area requiring further development, the implementation of a combined HR and Finance system will in time improve the data we hold.

I would also like to draw your attention to our regular published spend for transactions over £500 for electronic Purchasing Cards (ePC):
https://www.gov.scot/collections/government-spend-over-gbp500-monthly-reports/ and also our monthly and annual reports of Scottish Government spend over £25,000:
https://www.gov.scot/collections/government-spend-over-gbp25000-monthly-reports/

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.