Scottish Government officials authorised to post on X/Twitter account: FOI release

Information requested

A list of those persons authorised to tweet from the @scotgov X/Twitter account. If there is a person (or persons) who must approve any tweet from the account, please identify who those persons are.

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because an exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA applies to that information.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party, eg names/contact details of individuals below the Senior Civil Service, and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

The @scotgov account on X/Twitter is managed by the Communications Directorate. The breakdown of officials authorised to post to this channel is:

• 1 Deputy Director - Julie Grant, Deputy Director of News & Digital
• 2 Deputy Heads of News
• 1 Head of Digital and Content
• 10 Communications Team Leaders
• 1 Head of Preparedness and Communications, Resilience Division
• 21 Senior Media Managers
• 2 Senior Social Media Managers
• 1 Senior Internal Communications Manager
• 1 Senior Insight and Evaluation Manager
• 18 Media Managers
• 4 Social Media Managers
• 1 Social Media Assistant

The clearance requirements for each post will vary depending on the subject and related policy area. Typical clearance groups include senior policy officials and communications officials. Special Advisors may be included in correspondence to provide additional advice on the drafting of social media posts, and depending on the subject of the post, final clearance may also be sought at Ministerial, Director or Permanent Secretary level.

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