Staff - IT (2021)
Request
- Headcounts of IT staff within your organisation over the last 3 years (September 2021, September 2020, September 2019).
- Please provide a breakdown of permanent staff and contractors
- If possible please provide detail on job titles and salaries e.g. 4x Data Scientists £35,000 per year
Response
Please note that IT staff are employed by the Parliamentary Digital Service (PDS), which is a bicameral body that provides IT services and support to both Houses of Parliament. Although the House of Commons and the House of Lords are two separate public authorities in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), where the House of Commons holds the requested information, this is detailed below.
1. Headcounts of IT staff within your organisation over the last 3 years (September 2021, September 2020, September 2019).
and
2. Please provide a breakdown of permanent staff and contractors
Some information is held by the House of Commons in relation to these parts of your request.
PDS record a headcount at the end of each month, which covers staff on the payroll with a permanent or fixed-term contract of employment. In addition, PDS record the number of day-rate contractors it has engaged. These two categories are included in the table below. Figures for September 2021 were not available at the time of your request, so, to be helpful, we have included figures for 31 August 2021.
As at | Headcount (staff on the payroll) | Number of Contractors |
September 2019 | 425 | 16 |
September 2020 | 451 | 40 |
August 2021 | 457 | 31 |
3. If possible please provide detail on job titles and salaries e.g. 4x Data Scientists £35,000 per year
This information is held by the House of Commons.
The job titles and salaries of senior PDS staff (those paid at pay band SCS2 or above) as at the end of the 2018/19 and 2019/20 financial years are outlined below.
Position on 31 March 2019 | Pay (£) |
CIO & Managing Director, Parliamentary Digital Services | 105 – 110k |
Position on 31 March 2020 | Pay (£) |
CIO & Managing Director, Parliamentary Digital Services | 115 – 120k |
The job titles and salaries of senior House of Commons and PDS staff as at the end of the 2020/21 financial year are published our website. This information is therefore exempt from disclosure in accordance with section 21(1) and (2)(a) FOIA, which removes a public authority from the obligation to provide access to information which is already in the public domain. This is an absolute exemption and the public interest test does not apply.
However, it may help you to know that information relevant to your request can be found at the Human Resources area of our Transparency pages.
In respect of all other PDS staff and all contractors, this information is exempt from disclosure in accordance with section 40(2) FOIA. Job roles and salaries are the personal data of those staff. Senior staff of the House of Commons and PDS can reasonably expect some personal data related to the performance of their public duties, including their job titles and salary, to be disclosed. However, for other individuals, where the balance between the legitimate interests in the disclosure of the information does not outweigh their privacy rights, the information should be withheld. In addition, most roles are carried out by fewer than five individuals, meaning that disclosure would allow them to be identified by others inside or outside our organisation. We have therefore concluded that disclosure of these job titles and salaries would not be consistent with the data protection principle found in Article 5.1(a) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and that this information is therefore exempt from disclosure in accordance with Section 40(2) FOIA. This is an absolute exemption and the public interest test does not apply.
However, we do hold a high-level organisational chart showing the structure of PDS. Names of senior staff have been included while names of all other staff on the chart have been withheld, for the same reasons as above.
It may also help you to know that statistics about House of Commons and PDS staff, including figures about the number of staff working at each pay band, are published in our HR & Diversity Annual Report , available on our parliamentary pages.