Roles of ministerial private office staff: FOI Review

Information requested

Original Request 202600504042

Copies of job descriptions and roles and responsibilities of all Scottish Government “ministerial private office” staff at pay scale grade C1, C2, C3 and SCS.

For the avoidance of doubt, this should include what is expected of individuals at these grades in relation to “Ministerial engagements, travel and gifts".

Response

I have now completed my review of our response to your request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) for:

“copies of job descriptions and roles and responsibilities of all Scottish government “ministerial private office” staff at pay scale grade C1, C2, C3 and SCS. For the avoidance of doubt, this should include what is expected of individuals at these grades in relation to “Ministerial engagements, travel and gifts”

Your review request

In your review you disagreed that job descriptions, which appear on external websites when recruitment is undertaken, should be exempt.

Our response

I have been asked to re-examine your request, to decide whether the original response should be confirmed, with or without modifications, as appropriate, or a fresh decision be substituted. I can confirm that I was not involved in the handling or decision-making around the original response. I have considered this case again, and have conducted a comprehensive review of the response, and the reasons behind withholding the requested information.

In accordance with section 21(4) of FOISA, I have reached a decision on your request.

I have reconsidered the applied exemption and concluded that the original decision should be modified and can confirm that we are now releasing information.

Please find the information for release at Annex A.

After careful consideration to the original response, I found that we were incorrect to apply a FOISA exemption section 38(1)(b)(personal information). This was applied as we interpreted your request as seeking copies of the job descriptions specifically in relation to Ministerial engagement, travel and gifts.

Your review request clarified that you were looking for “job descriptions, which appear on external websites when recruitment is undertaken”. Whilst we have not recruited externally for these posts, we have advertised via Scottish Government internal recruitment portals, and I am enclosing copies of the C band and SCS job descriptions for Ministerial Private Offices used for this purpose. You will see that ‘Ministerial engagement, travel and gifts’ are not explicitly referenced, rather they fall into governance and compliance responsibilities which the initial response sought to provide. I apologise for the confusion.

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 202600508829 - Information Released - Annex A

File type

PDF

File size

136.9 kB