§ Mr. BercowTo ask the Solicitor-General what the total cost of her Department's website was in real terms in each of the last four years; and how many hits it received in each of those years. [36150]
§ The Solicitor-General[holding answer 25 February 2002]: My own Department, the Legal Secretariat to the Law Officers, has had a Department website since February 2000. The costs incurred in connection with the Department website since its introductions are as follows:
December 1999 to September 2000
- £1,000—Web hosting foundation
February 2000
- £255—Housing costs
- £1,500—Design and build costs
October 2000 to September 2001
- £1,000—Web maintenance
February 2001
- £75—Hosting costs
October 2001 to March 2002
- £600—Web maintenance
February 2002 to February 2004
- £80—Domain name fee
March 2002
- £7.50—Domain name hosting fee.
The website has received approximately 20,414 homepage hits since February 2000.
Details of the other Departments for which the Attorney General is responsible are as follows:
Crown Prosecution Service
The costs which have been incurred by the Crown Prosecution since 1998, in connection with its website are as follows:
- £625 in 1998–99
- £2,394 in 1999–2000
- £2,063 in 2000–01, and
- £5,721 from April to December 2001.
These figures represent development costs as well as annual maintenance charges. The number of hits the website received in each of the last four years 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001 were 17,139, 31,152, 37,904 and 36,823 respectively.
Treasury Solicitor's Department
The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) has hosted the Treasury Solicitor's Department website since February 1997 at a maintenance cost of approximately £500 per annum. In October 2001 the maintenance level was upgraded at an additional cost of £1,413.67 to the end 6W of 2001. The website was upgraded in 2001 at a cost of £15,552. The annual costs since 1997 have been as follows:
- £549.06 in 1997
- £534.13 in 1998
- £521.54 in 1999
- £512.50 in 2000, and
- £17,465.97 in 2001.
No records were kept of the number of hits on the website until April 2001. Since 30 April 2001 there have been 43,820 hits.
Serious Fraud Office
Prior to 1999 Serious Fraud Office website costs were subsumed into other CCTA costs and so cannot be identified without disproportionate cost. The Serious Fraud Office website which was in use between 1998 and 2001 was designed at no cost.
The annual costs incurred by the Serious Fraud Office since 1999 are as follows:
- £750 in 1999–2000
- £585 in 2000–01, and
- £32,825 in 2001–02.
The costs indicated relate to charges for amendments to the website rather than design or hosting. The new SFO website activated in August 2001 is considerably more sophisticated and up-datable than the previous website and this is reflected in the increased costs.
Information on hits has been provided by the website administrative staff from the Open Government website, where Serious Fraud Office website hit details were previously displayed. More recent information on the new Serious Fraud Office website has been provided by IDnet, the current website host.
A 'hit' has been interpreted to mean a request for information in the commonly accepted sense. The details of hits provided do not therefore equate with the number of individuals looking at the website.
The annual number of hits received by the Serious Fraud Office website since 1998 are as follows:
- 4,628 in 1998
- 15,886 in 1999
- 58,131 in 2000, and
- 172,771 in 2001.