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Prepare the data

The Cabinet Office Transparency Data team has provided this guidance on how to collect and interpret your data for publication.

Senior Officials Transparency Guidance (PDF, 201 KB, 18 pages)

They will commission you with templates, timing, and support on appropriate approval processes.

This guidance will apply to transparency data for the period of January - March 2024 onwards

Government is committed to publishing this data every quarter.

Publish the data

Create a new GOV.UK publication page for each data release.
Create a collection page on GOV.UK for all data releases, with links to each individual publication page.

Consider creating a www.data.gov.uk collection page for each individual data set

Publication page template

The publication title, summary, detail and file name is a government standard and must not be changed.

Publication type: Transparency data

Title: [Department name or acronym]: senior officials business expenses, hospitality, and meetings [month to month] [year].
Example Title: Cabinet Office: senior officials expenses, hospitality and meetings, July to September 2024

Summary: Data on senior officials (SCS2+) business expenses, hospitality, and meetings with external individuals and organisations.

Body:

[Department] publishes details of [the Permanent Secretaries, Director Generals, Finance Directors, Commercial Directors and Directors who are senior responsible owners in the Governments Major Projects Portfolio] meetings with external individuals and organisations, and senior officials business expenses and hospitality every quarter.

Associations

Policies: Government transparency and accountability

Policy areas: Government efficiency, transparency and accountability

CSV attachment titles

• [Department]s senior officials expenses, [month to month] [year]
• [Department]s senior officials hospitality, [month to month] [year]
• [Department]s senior officialss meetings, [month to month] [year]

For example:

1. Cabinet Office Senior officials expenses January to March 2025
2. Cabinet Office Senior officials hospitality January to March 2025
3. Cabinet Office Senior officials meetings January to March 2025

Collection page [GOV.UK]

Add the new publication page to your departments collection page for this data.

Make sure the collection page is tagged to the Government transparency and accountability policy.

Collection page template

Title: [Department]: senior officials business expenses, hospitality, and meetings

Summary: All data on senior officials (SCS2+) business expenses and hospitality, and [Permanent Secretaries, Directors General, Finance Directors, Commercial Directors and Directors who are senior responsible owners in the Governments Major Projects Portfolio] meetings with external organisations.

Body (optional):
[Department] publishes details of senior officials (SCS2+) business expenses and hospitality and the [Permanent Secretaries, Directors General, Finance Directors, Commercial Directors and Directors who are senior responsible owners in the Governments Major Projects Portfolio] meetings on a quarterly basis.

Subheadings: Add headings for each calendar year, most recent first.

DATA.GOV.UK page templates

When the dataset is published, add a link to it in your departments section on data.gov.uk.

We recommend that this is maintained as a series of collection pages listing all historic links on GOV.UK with a direct link to the .CSV resource.
An individual page will need to be maintained for each of the following:

1. Expenses
2. Hospitality, and
3. Meetings

Title: [Department]: Senior Officials [the specific data set] data
Example - a page for each data set:

1. Cabinet Office Senior Officials Expenses Data
2. Cabinet Office Senior Officials Hospitality Data
3. Cabinet Office Senior Officials Meetings Data

Summary: This is a collection and collation page for an element of [your department] Senior Officials Transparency publications [published here: {your Senior Officials collation pages on gov.uk}.]

Guidance - Each CSV published on GOV.UK will be listed here, to enable easy access to a single stream of data on Senior Officials. Please use the naming conventions present on your www.gov.uk collation pages to ensure data is accurately described and dated to specific period and year.

Historical Data

Where possible - review historical datasets on www.gov.uk and convert these to CSV format for ease of use within both www.gov.uk and for referencing within www.data.gov.uk.
Do not ever archive or remove historical publications from www.gov.uk.