Expenditure with Exception UK Limited: FOI review

FOI reference: FOI/17/02001
Date received: 10 October 2017
Date responded: 2 November 2017

Information requested

Details of all expenditure with Exception UK Limited commissioned and approved by the Head of Digital Services during 2015, 2016 and 2017 (up to and including July 2017) and asked for a breakdown for each year as follows:

• Details of all work commissioned.
• Details of all work delivered and how much was paid for each stage/ phase/or output.
• What competitive process was used for each year of engagement?
• What method was used by the Head of Digital Services to select this supplier for inclusion in any competitive process?
• Details of any sub-contractor or subsidiary used by Exception UK Limited to deliver any work outputs and how much they were paid for such work.
• Where resources were supplied or requested, details of the daily rate charged and the total expenditure by resource type or skill?
• Copy of any investment request or business case created or submitted by the Head of Digital Services to support all work awarded to Exception UK Limited.
• Details of the governance model used by the Head of Digital Services to manage and control the overall expenditure with this supplier.

Response

Further to our email of 10 October 2017, I have now completed my review of our response to your request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA).

I have concluded that the original decision should be confirmed, with some clarification.

In your review request, you stated that we only provided you with details of expenditure with Exception UK Limited for 2016/17, and not the other years requested. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Education Scotland does not have some of the information you have requested. The reasons why we don't have the information are explained below.

You also requested details of any investment case created or submitted by the Head of Digital Services but say we did not provide this, and finally, you ask for evidence of the governance arrangements (project plan, risk log, project board meetings, tolerances, project closure report, lessons learned output or similar), asking that we provide evidence of these or confirm that no such normal processes when spending £120,000 of public funds were followed by the Head of Digital Services or Education Scotland.

In terms of Governance arrangements, the investment case, already issued to you as Annex A to our original response, was presented and discussed at a meeting with two Assistant Directors and the Chief Operating Officer. The proposal was approved at this meeting, but there is no documentation associated with the meeting. The spend associated with this work was authorised in line with the organisation's financial controls. Key risks and the scope of the work are outlined in the investment case which you already have. We do not hold any further relevant information.

Reasons for not providing information

Education Scotland does not have the information you have asked for because the only expenditure with this company was incurred in the financial year 2016/17 and therefore no information for either 2015 or 2016 exists. This should have been made clear to you in the original response and I apologise for the fact that it wasn't.

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

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