Heather Brooke
The Scottish Parliament Information Centre
By e-mail:
Edinburgh
Request-15315-
EH99 1SP
86bb1aed@whatdothey
know.com
Tel: 0131-348-6913
Fax: 0131-348-5050
[email address]
FOI Request No: 2009-015643
31 July 2009
Dear Heather Brooke,
REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ON FREEDOM OF INFORMATION, MARKETING
AND EXTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS (FOI Request No: 2009-015643)
Thank you for your request for information received on 28th July relating to freedom
of information, marketing and external communications. Your request is being
handled in accordance with the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.
Your request refers to the “Department” and for avoidance of doubt we will be
responding as The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body (SPCB).
To enable us to respond to your request we would be grateful if you could provide
clarification to the following:
•
In questions 1, 3 and 5 you refer to ‘external communications’. We need
clarification of what you mean by this. It is a founding aim of the Scottish
Parliament that we encourage and develop public awareness of and
engagement with the parliamentary process. We have always strived to make
sure that as many people as possible know how to get involved with and
influence their Parliament. We have a strong programme of engagement
activities designed to help people take part in the democratic process, which
include a programme of school visits and educational based activities with
difficult to reach audiences. This goes well beyond the narrower activity of the
Parliament advertising specific activities for general public participation such
as exhibitions and events like our Festival of Politics.
We would be grateful if you would clarify whether by the term ‘external
communications’ you are seeking the costs and staffing for our very extensive
engagement programme which involves activities in the vast majority of the
offices in the Scottish Parliament or if you are referring more specifically to our
narrower activities which include dedicated advertising of Scottish Parliament
events and activities.
• In question 2 you ask for the number of dedicated Freedom of Information
Officers. We would like clarification as to whether you are interested only in
staff in our Freedom of Information team in SPICe (our Information Centre),
who have this as a substantive part of their role, rather than purely
administrative support staff, throughout the organisation, who may periodically
assist with a specific request. Or would you wish us to include temporary
administrative staff engaged purely for FOI purposes; for example we
employed a temporary member of staff in 2008 to photocopy and scan
documents to reply to a significant number of large freedom of information
requests?
• In questions 3 and 4 you ask for staff costs and we would like to clarify if this
refers to staff salaries only, or salaries plus on-costs such as pension, national
insurance etc or indeed staff costs combined with staff-related costs such as
training, travel etc?
• In question 6 you ask for the total spend on freedom of information and we
would like to check if this refers to the total cost of processing freedom of
information requests or whether, given question 4, it should exclude the costs
of dedicated FOI staff?
• In question 7 you have asked if a newsletter is produced and we would like to
clarify if you are referring to a freedom of information newsletter (we produce
a periodic internal e-mail newsletter on freedom of information) or if you are
referring to marketing literature provided to advertise special events and
activities in the parliament or if you mean all publications, literature and
pamphlets provided to inform and engage with the public in Scotland to
underpin our engagement activities.
In terms of the period of time you would like us to cover in our reply, you have
requested the information for the past three years up until the date when the request
is answered. In order to provide the information in a financially consistent way, (as
requested) we intend to provide the information covering the first three financial
months of 2009 i.e. April to June, together with annual figures for the period covered
by the previous three financial years, 2006-2007, 2007-2008 and 2008-2009.
The statutory 20 working day period for reply will begin once we have received
sufficient clarification from you to reply to your request.
In replying to this letter it would be helpful if you could quote the FOI request number
above.
Yours sincerely
Steven Tallach
FOI Officer
