FOI2020/00138: Grant Spend on Information Technology
Case reference FOI2020/00138
Published 1 July 2021
Request
Request Received: 19 May 2020
I am trying to find-out the percentage or actual amount of UKRI research council grants that is spent by the research projects on Information Technology (IT). i.e. How much of the grant does a research group typically spend on IT to support their research project/investigation?
I don't know if you published this sort of information or if you would be willing to disclose it please? As I imagine this will vary considerably by research discipline, ideally it would be at least a figure for each of the 9 councils as separate figures. If that breakdown is not possible, then perhaps an overall figure for all UKRI awarded grants.
Response
Response Sent: 18 June 2020
I can confirm UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) hold the information relevant to your request.
We estimate that the cost of complying with your request would exceed the appropriate statutory limit as specified within Section 12 of the FOIA which for UKRI is set at £450.
This represents the estimated cost of 18 hours of staff resource on locating, retrieving and extracting the information.
Whilst we can confirm that this information is held, we do not presently capture this information in the level of detail you have requested. Information regarding IT spend is typically provided on grant applications, however this specific information is not transferred into our systems as a data field.
To obtain the information you have requested would require manually reviewing thousands of grant applications, to extract and collate this specific data which would vastly exceed the cost threshold.
Consequently, UKRI is not obliged under Section 12 of the FOIA to respond to your request.
Documents
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