Response: Digital procurement costs
Published 20 September 2024
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| Reference number | FOI2024-00416 |
|---|---|
| Date of request | 20 September 2024 |
| Date of response | 26 September 2024 |
| Outcome | Cost limit exceeded |
Request for information
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (the department) received the following request for information which we responded to under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA):
I am trying to find out how much the Public sector spends on procurement digital tools in terms of (1) implementation cost to procure and implement digital tools (software) (2) Licenses and other cost of maintaining them etc.
This could be annual spend or spend over the past few years i.e. since 2021 I need the information as a consultant for EY as part of research to improve digital procurement processes.
Our response
We hold information that falls under the scope of your request. However, finding, retrieving and extracting the information would exceed the cost limit set out by section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).
Section 12
The scope of your request exceeds the cost limit under the FOIA . The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 states that the ‘appropriate limit’ for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is £600 which would equate to 24 hours work.
We have assessed that finding, retrieving and/or extracting the information within scope of your request would exceed 24 hours of work which would accrue a charge of £600 or more, triggering the provisions of section 12(1) of the FOIA.
For digital tooling and licences purchased on behalf of DSIT, it will take more than 24 hours to clearly identify all DSIT only related items as contracts are set up to enable purchasing for all customer departments. To obtain the information you require, we would need to manually go through every invoice for over 100 purchase orders, some of which have 200+ invoices.
For the reasons stated above, we are unable to provide the information you have requested.
Advice and assistance
It may be possible to provide some of the information within the cost limit if you refined your request to a specific platform or project. However, we would need to consider if it is in the public interest for us to dedicate the resources necessary to carry out this kind of search, or whether it represents an unreasonable burden on us as a public authority.