New hybrid working plan correspondence: FOI release

Information requested

I saw on reddit that there are a lot of grumpy workers because of 40%!

Can I FOI all emails from the senior people about this, intranet and all those sort of things as well, any comments, emails, statements, whatsapps, decision making and all that from the past 3 months.

Response

For the purposes of providing you with the information held by Scottish Government, we have interpreted your request into three parts.

The first section “emails from the senior people about this” we have interpreted to mean emails from the Permanent Secretary, Executive team and Senior Responsible Officer for the hybrid working project.

I enclose a copy of these emails in Annex A. Some details have been redacted under Section 38(1)(b) to protect the personal information of colleagues who are not Senior Civil Servants as is standard practice.

The second part we have interpreted as referring to Whatsapp. 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. The reasons why we don't have the information are explained below.

Whatsapp is not used for official business in Scottish Government during the timeframe in your request. This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.

The third part of your request relates to Scottish Government’s “intranet and all those sorts of things, comments, emails, statements and decision making”. We have interpreted this to mean our internal staff website, Saltire which includes Staff comments as well as our staff networking site Viva Engage.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. There is a large volume of information about hybrid working with staff comments, with a particularly large number of redactions being required to protect staff identities. 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.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. To do this you may consider reducing the scope to one of our internal sites, to a particular staff group or by reducing the date range. 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.

FOI 202500465293 - Information released - Annex A

File type

PDF

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514.6 kB