Internet (Hansard, 1 December 1994)

§ Mr. Soames

My Department already uses Internet to make information widely available. In particular, press releases are made available electronically through the.Central Office of Information to be accessible to users of Internet via data-star dialog (Europe) or Mead/Lexis/

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to pay. This matter falls to me, as Chief Executive of the Defence Accounts Agency, for reply. 2. Departments are required to provide details of their annual payment performance in their Departmental Reports. For financial year 1993/94, Ministry of Defence paid 99.9 percent of its bills In accordance with agreed contractual conditions or, where no such contractual conditions existed, within 30 days of the presentation of a valid invoice. 3. The MOD bill payment office at Liverpool also measure their performance against the higher departmental standard of payment within 11 working days of receipt of a valid invoice. They are currently achieving 97 percent. 4. As the vast majority of bills are paid within the 11 day target the average and median over the last 12 months would not be meaningful, but I have listed below, for each of the last 12 months for which figures are available, information which I hope you find useful.

Nexis. My Department was involved, with the US Department of Defense, in the early development of Internet and has used Internet facilities for research purposes for many years. Security considerations prevent its widespread use within my Department but we are currently considering extending our use of Internet, to include the provision of a facility for making some Defence information, currently published in open literature, available electronically in a similar format to.that adopted by the Central Computers and.Telecommunications Agency and HM Treasury.