IT Training

Your request was about the following information:

Q1. For the Financial years 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24 please confirm whether your organisation purchased training in any of the below areas. Please provide a breakdown of the value purchased for each area, the number of people who received that training?

• Agile & Scrum

• Business Analysis

• Data Analytics

• Enterprise Architecture

• Lean/Lean Six Sigma

• Project & Programme Management

• Technical IT Training

Q2. Specifically focusing on Technical IT Training for the same 3 year period please confirm how much of this training, if any, was in Microsoft products and provide a breakdown in terms of the value purchased, the cost per training and the number of people receiving training in each of the below products?

• Microsoft Word

• Microsoft Excel

• Microsoft PowerPoint

• Microsoft Power BI

• Microsoft Teams

• Other Microsoft product

Q3. What are your organisation's procurement rules around purchasing training and how do these change when certain value thresholds are reached, see examples below.

• under £5,000 - 1 quote,

• over £5,000 but under £10,000 - 3 quotes required

• over £10,000 – 5 quotes via an open procurement exercise

• over £20,000 – full tender exercise

Q4. Do you have a competency framework in place? If yes, which department manages this. If no, is there a central training function, if yes, where does this report to?

Q5. Is the expectation that budget will be made available for training 2024/25, if yes what value?

A1. Please find below the table with the information you requested:

A2. Please find below the table with the information you requested:

A3. Our procurement rules follow the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 and the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015. Our procurement thresholds for purchasing, not just for training are:

• £1,000 to £10,000 – up to 3 quotes
• over £10,000 to under £50,000 –  unregulated procurements, use quick quote option/open procurement exercise depending on requirement
• over £50,000 – regulated procurements, full tender exercise

We are able to use the Scottish Government’s (SG) frameworks and contracts that are in place.  In addition, we can also call off from the Crown Commercial Services frameworks.

A4. Food Standards Scotland (FSS) staff are employed under the SG terms and conditions. As such we align with SG’s HR policies and Skills for Success Competency Framework. The FSS Human Resources team manages the training function for the organisation and reports to the Director for Corporate Services.

A5. FSS has a Development and Corporate training budget. We have not yet finalised our budgets for 2024/25, however the expectation is that there will be at least a £50k training budget available for the next financial year.