Access to the SIA's contract register and procurement strategy
Published 13 August 2024
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Request
I am writing to submit a Freedom of Information request for information related to the organisation’s contracts register, procurement strategy document, and contact details. Please find the detailed requests below:
Request 1: contract register
I am seeking, in its entirety, the organisation’s contract register or database. The register should include the following categories or their equivalents:
- contract reference (unique reference number associated with the contract)
- contract title
- procurement category
- supplier name
- spend (total, annual or contract value)
- contract duration
- contract extensions
- contract start date
- contract expiry date
- contract description (please provide as much detail as possible)
- contract owner (person who manages the contract register)
- contact details of section 151 officer
- CPV codes or ProClass details
- the number of contracts currently being held on the contract register
Request 2: procurement strategy document
Can the organisation provide a full version of their procurement strategy for the fiscal year 2024-2025?
If the procurement strategy is a strategic direction (2022-2025) instead of an annual plan, please provide an update document for 2023-2024. If an update cannot be provided, please provide information on when an update is planned to be published.
We require the full document. If any parts of this document have been removed, please state this in your response.
Request 3: contact details
Provide the contact details of the person responsible for API or data sharing, including their name, job title, telephone number, and email address.
Provide the contact details of the person responsible for the actual contract’s register, including their name, job title, telephone number, and email address.
Important:
- if the organisation has a CRM system or a similar system, ensure there is a facility to download and extract contract data
- if providing a weblink to a portal, ensure that all contracts are included, as some organisations may only upload a small portion of their contracts
- for organisations planning to make an exemption around spend, clarify that the spend information requested is an overall figure, and a complete breakdown is not required
Response
Request 1
Our entire contract register is intended for future publication and is therefore exempt from disclosure under section 22(1)(a) of the FOIA. We intend to publish it online.
Contracts higher than £10,000
Information about contracts above £10,000 is exempt from disclosure under section 21 of the FOIA because it is reasonably accessible by other means - namely, it is readily available online.
The SIA publishes all contracts over £10,000 (ex-VAT) online in accordance with the Public Contract Regulations.
Contracts up to a value of £139,688 can be accessed through the Contracts Finder.
Contracts over the value of £139,688 can be accessed through the Find a Tender service.
Contracts lower than £10,000
In respect of contracts lower that £10,000, this part of the response will be a refusal to deal with your request because it exceeds the appropriate cost limit.
Section 12(1) – (4) of the FOIA allows a public authority to refuse to deal with a request where it estimates that it would exceed the appropriate limit to comply with the request in its entirety or to confirm or deny whether the requested information is held. In the case of a public authority such as the SIA, the appropriate cost limit is £450.
The ICO guidance, The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004, sets out how a public authority should estimate whether the work required to obtain information is reasonable and appropriate. In the case of requests that would require work on the part of public authority staff, this is estimated at a rate of £25 per person per hour. This means that 18 hours is considered the appropriate limit.
The information you have requested is not contained in a central record and therefore cannot be instantly isolated and retrieved. For this information to be collated it would require a manual trawl of various departments’ systems which would exceed the cost and time limitations.
In order to better facilitate a response, I suggest you limit the scope of your request so that we can manually search and collate the information until the cost and time limit is reached. Given that it will be a very time intensive exercise to manually search for each contract below £10,000, I would ask that you limit your search to a particular timeframe that you are interested in - perhaps the last 3 months. The SIA will search for as many contracts below £10,000 as possible in this reduced timeframe. If we are able to search for contracts well within the appropriate cost limit we will get in touch and request that you provide us with details of a further timeframe you would like to be searched.
I would be grateful if you could confirm your position in respect of this FOI request and whether you would like assistance in trying to refine the scope of your request.
Procurement Strategy
The SIA currently operates in line with our overarching strategic plan. Information about a bespoke procurement strategy is intended for future publication and therefore exempt for disclosure under section 22(1)(a) FOIA. The SIA can confirm that this information is currently being held by us with a view to its publication at some date in the future. Once published, this information will be available on our website.
This strategy will align with the update to the Procurement Regulations (Procurement Act 2023) due this October. In the interim, our procurement team supports our core business areas to deliver their strategies. Many of our contracts are subject to Cabinet Office Spend Controls. These help organisations to reduce unnecessary spend and encourage cross-government collaboration. We use this assurance to ensure alignment with wider public sector spend.
Contact Details
API or data:
The SIA does not have a single point of contact. You can send us a message through our contact form and our Customer Support team will forward it to the relevant team.
Procurement:
The SIA does not have a single point of contact but does operate a departmental email address where enquiries can be allocated depending on the subject matter. This address is: sia.procurement@sia.gov.uk.
[Ref: FOI 0520]