§ Mr. Don FosterTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list the expenditure incurred by his Department, agencies and non-departmental public bodies on(a) the setting up and (b) the operation of web sites, indicating the cases in which the expenditure has been above that budgeted; and if he will list for each web site (i) the topics covered, (ii) the current average number of hits per month and (iii) the estimated expenditure on each web site for each of the next three years. [70975]
§ Mr. Doug HendersonIt is the policy of the MOD to make information widely available to the public in an accessible form, subject to necessary security restrictions. As part of this policy, the Ministry of Defence maintain a number of publicly accessible internet web sites. Topics covered range across the full business activities of the Department, including defence policy and operations, defence research, meteorological and hydrographic information, defence standards, and Service recruitment. We do not hold figures for the average monthly number of accesses, or "hits", to MOD web sites. However, the most recent month's figures are given for each site for which this information is available centrally. Unless otherwise stated, these figures cover the period 1 January 1999 to 31 January 1999.
The main sites currently available are:
- Ministry of Defence(http://www.mod.uk): 845,615
- Royal Navy (http://www.roval-navy.mod.uk): 425,397
- Army (http://www.army.mod.uk): 3,090,2701
- Royal Air Force(http://www.rafmod.uk): 1,049,812
494 - Royal Auxiliary Air Force (http://www.rauxaf.mod.uk)
- DERA (http://www.dra.hmg.gb)
- Atomic Weapons Establishment (http://www.awe.co.uk)
- Met Office (http://www.meto.gov.uk)
- Hydrographic Office (http://www.hydro.gov.uk)
- MOD Directorate of Standardisation (Http://www.dstan.mod.uk)
- Joint Air Transport Evaluation Unit
- (http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/avenue/xjy87/index.htm)
1Covers period from 1 January 1999 to 7 February 1999
In addition, some Non Departmental Public Bodies, such as Service museums, maintain their own web sites, independent of the MOD.
The costs of setting up and operating these sites, and of individual future budgets, are not held centrally or in the form requested, and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.