§ Mr. BercowTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the total cost of his Department's website was in the last 12 months; and how many hits it received in the same period. [104206]
§ Mr. BlunkettThe available information for the main Home Office website is shown in the table.
2002–03 Cost (£) 180,290.83 Number of page impressions 74,814,304 The Home Office website moved to a new server on 1 July 2002. Due to technical limitations on the server used between April and June 2002, no full record is available of the page impressions made of some parts of the site during that period. The figure shown in the table therefore under-represents the real number of page impressions.
With over half of the homes in the United Kingdom now online1 and public access on the rise, our website is an invaluable tool for disseminating important information to the public and in opening up new areas of knowledge about Home Office activity in general. It is a cost-effective vehicle that allows us to speak to many people at once and offers the option for anyone to give us their feedback. We are developing the website, most recently providing information on protection against the terrorist threat.
1Oftel January 2002