Evidence that investment decisions meet the required outcomes: FOI release

Information requested

 

1.    A copy of the guidance provided by the Scottish Government to the project managers for these projects which sets out the methodology used for the monitoring and evaluation of the inclusive growth outcomes delivered by these projects; 

2.    The suite of specific inclusive growth outcomes and KPIs that will be delivered and measured against each of these 55 projects;

3.    All emails, documents and meeting notes which demonstrate that a mechanism is currently in place to monitor and report on the inclusive growth outcomes/KPIs for each of these 55 projects; and

4.    The sections from the business cases/plans for these 55 projects which quantifies the measurable inclusive growth benefits that will be delivered by each of these 55 projects.

 

Response

 

Question part 1

Links to relevant guidance as requested is provided in the enclosed Annex B.

Question parts 2 and 4

The information that can be provided has been compiled into a table which can be found in the enclosed Annex C.  The information provided has been extracted from business cases and accompanying data.  The third column in the table details wider benefits of the projects including Inclusive Growth outcomes and community benefit.   The requested information for 5 roads projects is contained in Annex D and E for parts 2 and 4 respectively.   We cannot provide information for all 55 projects and the reason for this is explained in Annex A on this letter.

You will find more related information about the Transport Scotland rail projects at the following link:

https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20170105054315/http:/www.transport.gov.scot/report/j10194a-09.htm

The enclosed Annex F contains additional information provided by the Scottish Prison Service concerning community benefits related to Scottish Prison Service projects.

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 reason why we do not have all the information is explained in Annex A on this letter.
• the costs of locating, retrieving and providing all of the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600.  The reason why we cannot provide all the information is explained in Annex A on this letter.

Question part 3

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. The reason why we cannot provide this information is explained in Annex A on this letter. 

You may find the information contained in this previously released FOI https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-17-01599/ and the most recently published report; Major Capital Projects Update: March 2019 https://www.gov.scot/publications/infrastructure-investment-plan-2015-major-capital-projects-update-march-2019/ to be relevant to your query.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600.  You could do this by selecting one project you are particularly interested in.  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

 

ANNEX A 

REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION 

The Scottish Government does not have the information

The Scottish Government does not have all the information you have asked for in part 2 of your request because the Scottish Government either has no role in monitoring or managing the projects or KPIs specific to inclusive growth have not been specified at this time for the projects in question.  See Annex C.

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

The costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information would exceed the upper cost limit of £600

The costs of locating, retrieving and providing some of the information in parts 2 and 4 of your request and all of the information in part 3, considered together with other information being provided under this FOI release, would exceed the upper cost limit of £600.

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.

Question part 2 and 4

With regard to Health projects specifically;

• Each project has 3 stages of business case – initial agreement, outline business case and full business case
• Each stage of the business case will be approx. 100 pages + multiple (often double figures) appendices meaning that business cases typically run to 300 pages in total, sometimes more.
• We would need to skim read each of the business cases.
• If we estimate that per business case per stage per project it would take 1.5 hours to skim read this gives: 12 x 3 x 1.5 = 54 hours.

 Question part 3

Emails and documents for one of the infrastructure projects were searched for and this one search this would result in 45 hours of work to have to be carried out.  This would then have to be replicated for the other 54 projects.  

 

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.

 

foi-19-01177 Annexes B,C,E & F

File type

24 page PDF

File size

872.9 kB

foi-19-01177 Annex D

File type

Excel document

File size

24.3 kB