Dear Mr/Ms Graham

Thank you for your recent email. A reply will be sent to you as soon as
possible. For information, the departmental standard for correspondence
received is that responses should be sent within 20 working days as you
are requesting information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Your correspondence has been allocated the reference number
2010/0076980.

Thank you.

Central Allocation Team

Public Communications Team

Tel: 0870 0002288
www.education.gov.uk

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Dear Mr/Ms Graham,

Thank you for your email of 20 September 2010 requesting details of the
current "Schedule of Contracts" information from the Department that deals
with procurement.

There is no legal requirement for public bodies to compile a register of
contracts so the Department will be unable to provide this information.

The Government, in its publication `The Coalition: our programme for
Government', sets out the need for greater transparency across its
operations. This includes the publication of all ICT contracts with a
value over -L-10k from July 2010 and all other new central Government
contracts over -L-10k from January 2011. An ICT contract is one that is
one or more of the following:

. a good or service which is ICT in itself

. an ICT enabled business change project

. a project where ICT is a key element or feature of that project
(e.g. representing more than 40% of the requirement or contract value)

The Department is currently setting up a page on its website,
[1]http://www.education.gov.uk, where information on contracts with a
value over -L-10k will be published. The webpage is expected to be
available from the end of September 2010 and we will begin publishing
relevant ICT contracts with a value over -L-10k from the beginning of
October 2010.

If you have any queries about this letter, please contact me, remembering
to quote the reference number in any future communications.

If you are unhappy with the way your request has been handled, you should
make a complaint to the Department by writing to me within two calendar
months of the date of this letter.

If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint, you may apply
directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. Generally, the
ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted our complaints/review
procedure.

Yours sincerely,

Helen Rafferty
COMMERCIAL SERVICES DIVISION
[email address]
[2]www.education.gov.uk

Your correspondence has been allocated the reference number 2010/0076980.

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Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.

References

Visible links
1. http://www.education.gov.uk/
2. http://www.education.gov.uk/

Dear Mr/Ms Graham,
Thank you for your email of 7 October 2010 about the publication of the
Department's contracts.

I can confirm the Department will be fulfilling its requirements to
publish data under the Government's Transparency agenda and this will
include publishing information on new contracts over -L-10,000 from
January 2011 as required by HM Treasury guidance.

I apologise if my earlier reply did not meet your requirement. As I
mentioned in my response, the Department for Education does not hold
centrally an up to date record of its contracts. In order to gather the
information you requested would involve gathering the data from each
directorate in the Department and collating it into a single database. The
cost of complying with your request would exceed the appropriate limit
which has been specified in regulations and which for central Government
is set at -L-600. This represents the estimated cost of one person
spending three and a half working days locating, retrieving and extracting
the information.

If you have any queries about this letter, please contact me, remembering
to quote the reference number in any future communications.

f you are unhappy with the way your request has been handled, you should
make a complaint to the Department by writing to me within two calendar
months of the date of this letter.

If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint, you may apply
directly to the Information Commissioner (ICO) for a decision. Generally,
the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted our
complaints/review procedure.
Yours sincerely,

Helen Rafferty
COMMERCIAL GROUP
[email address]
[1]www.education.gov.uk

Your correspondence has been allocated the reference number 2010/0083294.

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Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.

References

Visible links
1. http://www.education.gov.uk/

Dear Mr/Mrs Graham,

Thank you for your email below.

You raise an interesting question. All correspondence which comes into
the Department is received or directed to the Communications team who
allocate cases according to the nature of the request. In the case of
your earlier requests this would be directed in the first instance to
this particular team.

Your requests would be dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act
2000 ("the Act") and the Freedom of Information and Data Protection
(Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004. We would have to consider
using Regulation 5 of the Act which provides that where two or more
requests for information are made to a public authority by one person,
the estimated cost of complying with any of the requests is to be taken
to be the total costs of complying with all of them where two or more
requests relate to any extent to the same or similar information, and
those requests are received within any period of sixty consecutive
working days.

I hope this answers your question. If you have any further queries about
this letter, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours sincerely,

Helen Rafferty
[email address]
Commercial Group
Department for Education

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