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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