Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 - information request handling: annual report 2019

2019 annual report on the handling of information requests made to the Scottish Government under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004.


Requests for information

Background

The Scottish Government is committed to Freedom of Information as an essential part of open, democratic government and responsive public services. Furthermore, we proactively publish as much information as possible via our website without it having to be requested.

You can find out more about the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, including how to request information from the Scottish Government, from the FOI section of our website.

In addition to the summary below, you can find out more about our performance and response times for handling Freedom of Information requests in the FOI Reporting section of our website.

We continued to publish information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. You can view all published FOI responses in the Publications section of our website.

All Scottish public authorities (including the Scottish Government) provide quarterly FOI/EIR statistics to the Scottish information commissioner. This can be found at the following link: STATS - Scottish Information Commissioner

Number of requests responded to

In total, 3049 requests for information were responded to in 2019 under both FOISA and EIRs

Requests are answered by the business area responsible for the subject matter of the request. Details about the functions of the Scottish Government are available on the About the Scottish Government section of our website.

Requests Total
Director-General Constitution And External Affairs 196
Director-General Economy 1179
Director-General Education, Communities And Justice 695
Director-General Health & Social Care 287
Director-General Organisational Development And Operations 655
Director-General Scottish Exchequer 37
Total 3049

The number of requests responded to averaged 254 per month with actual figures ranging from 315 requests in April to 193 requests in June.

Performance

The majority (93%) of requests for information received by us were processed on time in 2019, i.e. within 20 working days of receipt of the request. Of the 3,049 requests responded to in 2019, 2,843 were answered on time and 206 were late.

Requests No Requests No Requests On Time No Requests Late
% On time*
Director-General Constitution And External Affairs 196 195 1 99%
Director-General Economy 1179 1119 60 95%
Director-General Education, Communities And Justice 695 648 47 95%
Director-General Health & Social Care 287 262 25 91%
Director-General Organisational Development And Operations 655 582 73 89%
Director-General Scottish Exchequer 37 37 0 100%
Total 3049 2843 206 93%

*Withdrawn cases and cases not proceeded with are omitted from the performance calculation.

Contact

Email: foi@gov.scot

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