FOI and Correspondence Officer

You will provide a key role within the Administration Team contributing to the corporate objectives of the Agency. This is a hands-on operational area and the post holder will have to deal with constantly changing and often urgent priorities as issues arise and manage a range of different work areas.

You will be part of the correspondence section of the Administration Team. The overall team has 13 staff (currently 1xC2, 1xB3, 3xB2, including this vacancy, 1xB1, 2xA4, 6xA3) to ensure a high level of support for a wide range of the Directorate’s operations.

This post will manage high levels of correspondence cases, Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 requests concerning trunk roads and motorways within Scotland ensuring the statutory deadline for replying is met. You will also draft Parliamentary Questions concerning trunk roads and motorways within Scotland.

You will be required to ensure these tasks are carried out to a high standard, managed and handled in line with corporate targets; making sure there is consistency of approach and joined up working across the different parts of the Directorate and wider Agency.

• Supporting the day-to-day management of all requests, escalating matters as required.
• Logging all incoming requests on the relevant management system.
• Monitor the shared mailbox, ensuring incoming messages are appropriately managed and responded to in a timely way.
• Reviewing new requests, triaging and allocating requests to the appropriate and relevant managers and senior managers in line with the relevant organisational and legal requirements.
• Provide advice to staff regarding the application of relevant legislation and guidance.
• Tracking the progress of requests to ensure timely responses are sent to requestors, and that the organisation is compliant with the statutory deadlines for responding to requests and escalating non-engagement with responses in a timely way.
• Drafting high quality, responses to requests, assessing the information being provided and any possible harm resulting from its release, and securing appropriate senior manager sign off in line with organisational policy.