§ Mr. BercowTo ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the total cost of his Department's website was in real terms in each of the last four years; and how many hits it received in each of those years. [36138]
§ Mr. McCartneyThe information on the annual cost of the DWP website www.dwp.gov.uk formerly the DSS website www.dss.gov.uk is not available throughout the last four years.
1263WA new DSS website was launched in August 2000 at a production cost of £183,650 for the research, design and building of the site. In December 2001 the site was rebranded for DWP and broadened to include information for the new Department at a cost of £48,193.
In-house internet staff maintain the site and we would be unable to break these costs down without incurring disproportionate cost.
Web hosting and provision of web services is provided by the Department's IT contractor. However, internet services are not accounted for separately and it is not possible to disentangle the costs from overall IT services.
Hits received in each of the last four years are available from statistical records and are in the table:
No of hits received on DSS/DWP website 2000–01 36,415,365 1999–2000 32,487,969 1998–99 21,980,416 1997–98 8,986,375