Skills delivery independent review: terms of reference

Communications and information sharing

The Advisor is not a Scottish public authority for the purposes of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) or the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs) and will therefore not be required to respond to FOI requests. The Advisor is appointed to be independent from Scottish Ministers, as reflected in their appointment letter and remit, and is therefore not considered subject to the Scottish Ministers’ designation under FOISA either.

Scottish Government officials will provide a secretariat function to the Advisor. All information received as part of the Advisor’s role will be stored electronically. The Secretariat will keep the Advisor’s records in a separate electronic file with restricted access. This will clarify that, for the purposes of FOISA and the EIRs, officials are holding these records only on behalf of the Advisor and not on behalf of the Scottish Ministers.

Information and papers sent to the Advisor are intended for viewing by the Advisor only. There should be an assumption that papers will contain Official Sensitive level information and thus should not be shared with third parties, either in hard copy or electronically and their content should not be discussed externally.  Minutes of meetings between the Advisor and the Secretariat are confidential and will not be shared with third parties.

All records and personal data handled by the Advisor in carrying out their role will be handled in accordance with the Scottish Government Information Security Policy, the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) together with the Data Protection Act 2018.

The Advisor will be the Data Controller in relation to any personal data processed in the course of their own work in this role. However, the Scottish Government will be the Data Controller for all of the material that is stored in relation to the work of the Advisor. The Advisor and the Scottish Government will consider a joint Privacy Notice on how all data will be shared.

The Advisor will engage widely and gather evidence to inform their recommendations. Public bodies participating in the Review will be expected to engage constructively and provide information and evidence to support the Advisor’s work, when requested.

The Advisor will write to relevant parties, including Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council, to provide a time limited opportunity to respond to any factual inaccuracies in relation to commentary on organisations included in the draft report/recommendations. This is intended to avoid the inclusion of factual errors, and will happen ahead of submission of a final report to the Scottish Government.