§ Mr. MaclennanTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will list the expenditure incurred by his Department, agencies and non-departmental public bodies on(a) the setting up and 650W (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 months and (iii) the estimated expenditure on each website for each of the next three years. [115803]
§ Mr. WillsThe central DfEE website covers a very wide range of education and employment information for many key audiences including teachers, head teachers, school governors, students, parents and employers. It has a core programme budget of £160,000 in 1999–2000, and £200,000 in each of the following three years, plus running costs for seven staff.
Total activity for the site is around 400,000 'page impressions' per month.
In addition, we have a number of important projects aimed at bringing on-line a wider range of web based services. The most significant are: development of the National Grid for Learning; the National Childcare Information Service; the Learning and Work Bank project to put vacancy, careers advice and learning opportunities for jobseekers and job changers on the web; the Electronic Communication with Schools project and websites specifically aimed at Standards in schools, Lifelong Learning, the New Deal and the Employment Service.
The number of these projects and non-departmental public bodies' websites coupled with the costs associated with the many people across the Department involved in providing material for websites mean that detailed expenditure figures are not easily obtainable without incurring disproportionate costs.