HC Deb 20 May 2002 vol 386 cc54-5W
Mr. Moore

To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what assessment she has made of the savings which will arise for each Government Department as a result of the website www.ukonline.gov.uk. [51514]

Mr. Leslie

I have been asked to reply.

Ukonline.gov.uk is an architecture on which multiple Government websites can be built and deployed quickly and cheaply without incurring separate hosting costs.

When ukonline.gov.uk was refreshed in January 2002, it was built in a modular way so that its components can be offered to Departments and local authorities. To this end, the architecture that supports ukonline.gov.uk is now being offered to Departments and local authorities so that they can deploy their web presences more rapidly at reduced cost.

Estimated cost savings are £5 for every £1 spent by each Department using the UK online infrastructure.

Mr. Moore

To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what research has been carried out to assess the level of(a) awareness in the population analysed by socio-economic group, (b) usage by the population analysed by socio-economic group, (c) repeat usage by the population and (d) satisfaction of users with respect to the website www.ukonline.gov.uk; and what the findings were. [51559]

Mr. Leslie

I have been asked to reply.

  1. (a) There is no specific piece of research that measures awareness of the website www.ukonline.gov.uk. However, the Office of the e-Envoy commissions an annual tracking study to measure the progress of the overall UK online campaign. These results showed that the overall awareness of UK online increased from 33 per cent. to 45 per cent. between January 2001 and February 2002. These results are also available by socio-economic group.
  2. (b) A new statistical analysis solution for ukonline.gov.uk was implemented in January 2002. This shows that usage of www.ukonline.gov.uk has risen from 14,000 unique users per week in January peaking at over 80,000 in April. Visits (a series of page views) have likewise increased from 50,000 in January peaking at over 170,000 in April. We do not have this data broken down by socio-economic group.
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  4. (c) The statistical analysis does not cover session cookies, therefore repeat usage figures are not available. However, we closely monitor customer feedback via our customer management programme. A dedicated team has been set up to handle customer queries in real-time and to analyse the feedback from members of the public.