Recruitment in ONS' Social Surveys Division

You asked

Please disclose the information that relates to recruitment within the Social Survey Division of ONS.

I would like to know about every appointment since January 1st 2018: Role Title, Process (open and fair competition), the number of candidates for each role (internal or external), Temporary or permanent, The selection interviewing and sift panel members, who the successful candidate was and why. All levels to and from and around ONS.

I would also like to know about the appointments and secondments to CIS and other affiliated sections and divisions in ONS and the CS in general.

To clarify, I am looking for EO, HEO,SEO, Grade 7 and Grade 6 appointments information. I want to establish whether each stage of an open and fair competition policy was followed. I do not want any information related to interviewers.

Again, with movements to and from CIS and SSD, I am only interested in the appointments and recruitment process of EO to Grade 7 posts.

So number of candidates, shortlisting and statistical information is essential to discover the pattern. I would also like to request all non identifying data including demographic data.

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

We have interpreted your request as follows:

Every appointment within the Social Survey Division (SSD) from EO to Grade 6 from 1 January 2018 to present.

For every appointment, you have requested the role title; the process by which that person recruited (Civil Service Jobs and the Applicant Tracking System, expression of interest, or any other form of recruitment); the number of candidates for each role and whether they were internal or external; whether the appointments were temporary or permanent; information on the panel members; and who the successful candidate was and why.

You have further requested information about the appointments and recruitment specifically to and from CIS and SSD for EO to Grade 7 posts.

This request is very wide and spans across a period of organisational changes which has made it difficult to provide you with exactly what you want. SSD ceased to exist on 31 December 2017, and on the 1 January 2018 this division was split across Social Survey Operations (SSO) and Social Survey Transformation (SST). Additionally, we can only identify the Directorate or Division of a campaign via cost codes, which have also changed over the past three years. To overcome those barriers, we have made checks across four different systems for the campaign tracking information needed.

There are three documents located within the associated downloads.

1) Document FOI_2021_2342_Social Survey Campaigns Output outlines

This spreadsheet provides the following information for every recruitment campaign from January 2018 to the present day:

• Vacancy Title
• How it was advertised -- internal/Across Govt/External
• Grade and Equivalent Grade
• The type of vacancy -- e. g. permanent
• Number of jobs available
• Total number of completed applications by applicant type
• Total number of successful applicants: those under an offer/hire status, by applicant type

We do not hold information on panel members for each campaign. Additionally, we are unable to provide you with information about candidates as this would constitute personal data. This information is therefore exempt under s.40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

The final two documents in the associated downloads are relating to the process by which candidates apply for positions with Expressions of Interest.

2) The EOIs.xlsx spreadsheet provides information about all roles advertised as accepting Expressions of Interest. This information dates back to January 2020 and consists of the following:

• Grade
• Role title
• Number of roles advertised
• Month/year the advert closed
• Number of candidates applied
• Whether or not there was a successful application
• Advertised as lateral/TP

The policy covering recruitment by EOI does not include a requirement to save details relating to EOI applications. We only started recording numbers centrally, as a voluntary change of process within SSO and SST, from January 2020 onwards. In order to provide you with information dating back to January 2018, we would need to ask every line manager who run an EoI to interrogate their files for any documents relating to expressions of interest. Given the numbers of people in line management, and moves within and outside ONS, we would expect this level of work to breach the cost limit of 24 hours and still not yield a complete record. It is for this reason that we have provided the information requested from January 2020 onwards.

3) Managers are always asked to follow the EOI process, which is the policy document located in the associated downloads. All roles, regardless of grade, are sent to all people within SSO, except where these roles are profession based and can only be advertised laterally.

The last part of your request was for information relating to the number of lateral moves between January 2018 and May 2021 from either Social Survey Operations or Social Surveys Transformations to COVID Infection Survey (CIS). Grades have been grouped so that numbers are not identifiable. Unfortunately, there is no way of linking the number of lateral moves with campaign data located in our Applicant Tracking Systems and so we would be unable to break this information down further.