Budget for advertising the “A Fresh Start with Independence” paper on social media: FOI release

Information requested

1) The cost of producing the “A Fresh Start with Independence” paper – broken down by all known costs. For example, design work.

2) The budget for advertising the “A Fresh Start with Independence” paper on social media. Break this down by social media platform.

Response

Regarding the first part of your request for the costs incurred in the publishing of ‘A Fresh Start with Independence’ paper, an exemption under S.27(1) of FOISA applies to this information. The reason why this exemption applies is explained in the Annex A of this letter.

It is not possible to provide you with details of costs of writing or the number of civil servants who worked on the creation of the paper. This is because this relates to work which was taken forward by civil servants as part of their normal duties supporting the Scottish Government and in line with usual practice, details of individual tasks carried out by civil servants, including the number of hours spent on them, are not routinely recorded as there is no business need to do this. This is a formal notice under S.17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested.

Regarding the second part of your request, the total budget for advertising ‘A Fresh Start with Independence’ was £10,000 excl. VAT. The breakdown of costs is as follows:

Meta: £6,136.90
LinkedIn: £1,541.91
YouTube: £2,212.39

Annex

Section 27(1) – information intended for future publication

An exemption under section 27(1) of FOISA applies to some of the information requested because we intend to publish that information within 12 weeks of the date of your request. We consider that it is reasonable to withhold the information until that date, rather than release this information before the planned publication date.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption. We recognise that there is some public interest in release because of the interest in an open and transparent government, and this will be met by our planned publication. In the meantime, there is a greater public interest in taking the time necessary to ensure the information has been properly collated and checked before it is published as planned. Also, we see no public interest in disrupting our programme of work to release the information ahead of the intended publication date.

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