§ Mr. Andrew TurnerTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs whether it is her policy to ensure that all documents referred to in parliamentary answers are available via her Department's website; and for how long she retains on her Department's website documents referred to in parliamentary answers. [72218]
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§ Mr. MorleyThe Department aims to be as helpful as possible in responding to hon. Members' Questions. Where it is helpful to refer hon. Members to other documents as part of the substantive reply, this may be done by making hard copies of documents available in the Libraries of the House, or by reference to material available on the Department's website.
Minimum requirements for the type of documents which should be published on Government websites are set out in guidance issued by the Office of the E-envoy, "Guidelines for UK Government Websites" (Illustrated Handbook for web management teams section 2.2 "What content should be on your website?" and section 2.3 "Cross-government requirements"). In addition to setting out guidelines on documents for inclusion, the guidance also explicitly requires Departments to ensure that the content of the site as a whole is up to date and current, and where it is necessary to update the content of individual documents, to show the latest date of amendment clearly on the document concerned. Section 1.2.7 deals with the issue of Records management and the OeE currently has a consultation paper out on Archiving websites. The purpose of this draft annex to the Illustrated handbook is to provide government website managers with a framework towards developing within their website management policy suitable procedures and systems to assist in the management, appraisal and preservation of electronic records. A copy of this draft is available online at http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/webguidelines.htm. A copy of the Guidelines for UK Government websites is available at http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/webguidelines.htm.
The Department's website carries all the categories of document identified by the Guidelines for UK Government websites, and displays the latest date of amendment clearly on each document. All documents are maintained on the website unless they become out of date or are superseded. We are taking account of the draft annex to the Illustrated handbook in developing our procedures and systems for maintenance of website material.