Scottish Government's Twitter accounts: FOI release

Information requested

1. For each member of the government, can you release details of the accounts they have blocked on Twitter?
2. Can you release details of all accounts blocked by each of the Scottish Government's Twitter accounts?

Clarification

We wrote to you to clarify the scope of your request with regards to “each of the Scottish Government’s Twitter accounts”. You confirmed that you are content to receive a response based on the primary accounts centrally managed by Scottish Government Communications.

Response

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.

Question 1

Regarding members of the Government, Scottish Government officials do not manage any personal Twitter accounts belonging to members of the Government.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.

Scottish Government Communications does manage the official Twitter account of the office of the First Minister of Scotland, and this is covered in our response to Q2.

Question 2

Regarding accounts blocked by Scottish Government Twitter accounts, we conducted an investigation into all accounts centrally managed by Scottish Government Communications. Of these, we identified ten government Twitter accounts that have blocked one or more users.

The following list provides a breakdown of the number of accounts blocked by those accounts:

• PlayTalkRead - 3
• Scotland - 20
• Scotgoveconomy - 1
• ScotGovEdu - 2
• ScotGovEurope - 3
• ScotGovHealth - 2
• ScotGovInter - 1
• ScotGovJustice - 3
• ScotGovRural - 1
• ScotGovNetZero – 1

Because the Twitter names of those accounts would be considered personal information, this is a formal notice that we have withheld that information under section s38(1)(b) of FOISA: Third Party Personal Data.

For clarification, a blocked Twitter account is unable to interact with our accounts whilst logged in. However, it does not prevent anyone from viewing Scottish Government posts on Twitter when logged out or when using an account that is not blocked.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.