§ Mr. MaclennanTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry 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 websites, indicating the cases in which the expenditure has been above that budgeted; and if he will list for each website (i) the topics which have been covered, (ii) the current average number of hits per month and (iii) the estimated expenditure on each website for each of the next three years. [115844]
§ Ms Hewitt[holding answer 30 March 2000]: Management of the websites of my Department, agencies and non-departmental public bodies, and Government Offices for the Regions is devolved to those with responsibility for particular areas. The costs associated with setting up and on-going operation of sites are not held or collected centrally and therefore the information requested could be provided only at disproportionate cost. The same is true both for future expenditure plans and for information on final costs versus initial budget estimates.
In terms of topics covered, the DTI site and associated sites offer information on nearly every area of the Department's responsibilities. The central DTI site (those within the Web domain www.dti.gov.uk) received an average of just over 5,600,000 hits per month over the last six months. Again, hits for all the sites for which my Department is responsible could be calculated only at disproportionate cost.