Scottish Government homeworking equipment costs: FOI release

Information requested

1) For each Scottish Government department, please provide me with the following breakdown of information.

1a) The total cost of equipment connected to enabling working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic since February 2020.

1b) An itemised list of what was purchased by each department and the cost of each item.

1c) Please also provide a date of purchase for each item.

Response

The Scottish Government does not have the information in the format you have asked for because some homeworking items were purchased centrally and cannot be broken down by department or individual items.

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

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing some of the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. It may be helpful to note that homeworking Items purchased by electronic procurement card and claims submitted to recoup the cost of homeworking equipment are not categorised as such and breaking all purchases and claims down into an itemised list of homeworking equipment by each department and date of purchase 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.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example requesting homeworking items purchased by a specific department. 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: Tips for requesters (itspublicknowledge.info)

I have however included total costs for homeworking equipment bought centrally and equipment costs that have been claimed back by staff since February 2020 which you may find beneficial:-

Source of Spend	Total Spend Since February 2020
Centrally supplied equipment	£181,453.75
Equipment costs claimed back by staff	£26,047.86

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.