Questions as per the Turnaround Time Suggested on FSS Website

Your request was about the following information:

‘Please can you help with answering the following questions as per the turnaround time suggested on your website?

1. For the Financial year 2021/22 please confirm whether your organisation purchased any training from the below Training Providers together with the value of the training purchased:

• Elite Training & Consultancy
• Global Knowledge
• Indicia Training
• QA Ltd
• The Knowledge Academy

2. Which of the below training areas did you purchase and what was the value purchased for each area?

• Agile & Scrum
• Business Analysis
• Cyber Security  Data Analytics
• Enterprise Architecture
• IT Service Management
• Lean/Lean Six Sigma
• Project & Programme Management
• Software Testing
• Technical IT Training

3. If you did purchase training in any of the areas listed in question 2, but not via Elite Training & Consultancy/Global Knowledge/Indicia Training/QA Ltd or The Knowledge Academy, which training provider did you purchase from and what was the total value of the training purchased? Please also confirm the training area purchased together with a breakdown of spend in each area.

4. Did your organisation purchase any digital learning subscription licences in Financial Year 2021/22 from any of the below digital learning platforms? If the answer is yes, how many licences did you purchase and what was the total value of the purchase?

• A Cloud Guru
• CBT Nuggets
• Cloud Academy
• LinkedIn Learning
• Plural Sight

5. 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

6. Does your organisation use any of the below public sector procurement frameworks to procure training and if so which one/s? Please also confirm the value of training purchased from each framework in relation to the training areas listed in question 2.

• Crown Commercial Service Dynamic Purchasing Service (DPS)
• G Cloud 12
• ESPO
• Scottish Government Project Management Framework

7. If you use an alternative procurement framework to procure training in the training areas listed in question 2 which framework do you use?

8. 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?

9. Is the expectation that budget will be made available for training 2022/2023, if yes what value?’

1. We purchased training from Elite Training & Consultancy and the value was between £5,000 and £10,000.

2. We purchased training for Project & Programme Management and the value was under £2,000.

3. None.

4. None.

5. Below you can find the organisation’s procurementrules around purchasing training and how these change when certain value thresholds are reached:

• Up to £1000 – can be purchased via GPC cards. One quote is minimum requirement.
• Up to £10,000 – minimum of three quotes where possible. Quotes can be verbal but the supplier must provide a written confirmation of verbal quote.
• £10,000 - £50,000 – Minimum of three written quotes via Public Contracts Scotland (PCS) Quite Quote
• £50,000 – OJEU Threshold – Formal competitive tendering exercise in accordance with Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014.

6. None.

7. N/A. 

8. We follow the Scottish Government “Skills for Success” competency framework.

9. Yes, value is not yet confirmed.