Tender documents of agencies on the Scottish Government's design, print publishing and associated services framework agreement have been posted online after a Freedom of Information request by a Scottish agency.

The tender documents of Freight, Morton Ward, Shaw, Teviot and Weber Shandwick Design have been placed on the Scottish Government’s website following the FOI request by Glasgow agency D8.

The documents have been partially censored by the Government in order to ensure that all ‘sensitive information’ is hidden from competitors. D8 said its motives were to look over the successful tenders and gain insight for future Government tendering opportunities, while also highlighting what it believes are flaws in the system.

James Young, managing director of D8, told The Drum: “Procurement is playing a bigger and bigger part in the design industry. Accepting that as a fact, the whole industry has to try and work within the system and make it as transparent as possible to ensure the highest standards of design and creativity are used in the future.”

Young said his company believed that the process should place "quality of work" at the heart when choosing creative agencies "over all other factors".

“In the long run we believe that putting creativity first will ultimately benefit everyone in the Scottish design industry, in terms of excellence recognised locally, nationally and internationally. The Scottish Government must, whilst aiming to promote Scottish Industries in a wider context, support that aim.”

This is not the first time that an FOI request has been made to the Scottish Government about its tendering processes, and that it has been forced to post agency tenders online.

Last year, an FOI request was made about the PR companies which were appointed to the Marketing Services Framework. The requesting company, Holyrood Partnership, also cited education as its sole motive.

Young added: “We placed an FOI request to publish the five recent submissions in the Scottish Government design roster tender as we are of the view that sole emphasis was placed on the non design criteria of the tender, which we believe, once the minimum standards set out have been met, should form little or no part of the process.

"The main criteria on evaluation thereafter must, in our view, be based on design ability and creativity and the quality of the work (which we accept are wholly subjective). We believe that by placing sole emphasis on the administrative elements the whole idea of providing a value for money service is eliminated, you cannot estimate value without knowledge of the applicants' ability.

"In placing the request we hope to highlight this inequity in the whole process, with a view to redressing the balance between the two necessary elements of the tender process.

“We have no criticisms of any of the five companies concerned and apologise to them if they are upset or concerned by our request. At D8, we understand that the process is a public one which must be and be seen to be fair. In entering a submission in any tender process, which by definition is a competition, we accept that any of our submissions may be published via a FOI request.

We hope that those concerned will understand that we believe that in asking for disclosure we are doing the right thing for the industry as a whole."