§ Matthew TaylorTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what the cost in(a) financial and (b) other terms was in (i) each financial year since 1997 241W and (ii) 2003–04 until the latest date for which figures are available of (A)developing and (B) maintaining (1) his Department's website and (2) each website for which his Department is responsible; and how many (C) unique hosts and (D) hits there were in each month for each website in (iii) each financial year since 1997 and (iv) 2003–04 until the latest date for which numbers are available. [155850]
§ Mr. Charles ClarkeThe information requested is as follows.
(a) (A and B; 1 and 2) Core programme costs, for developing and maintaining the Department for Education and Skills central website www.dfes.gov.uk and the other sites it is responsible (our six customer portals and Curriculum Online (from 2003)) are as follows:
Central website www.dfes.gov.uk1 Customer facing portals (six sites) Curriculum online www.curriculumonline.gov.uk 1997–98 43,200 — — 1998–99 84,200 — — 1999–2000 140,300 — — 2000–01 266,600 — — 2001–02 654,800 — — 2002–03 1,747,000 ℄ 2,753,875 2003–04 1,900,000 978,000 2,394,598 1From 2002 costs include hosting for other online services provided by the Department Figures for agencies and non-departmental public bodies are not included as collection of this information represents disproportionate costs. (b) We have assumed that cost in 'other terms' refers to staff overheads. Collection of this information represents a disproportionate cost.
(C) Unique hosts—We have considered this to mean the number of 'hosting services' (virtual and dedicated) that we are contracted to use. We are contracted with one supplier.
(D)(iii and iv)—Our site traffic figures are collected according the standards laid down in the Office of the e-Envoy's Guidelines for UK Government Websites which recommends that web teams should give more importance to unique visitors and page impressions than to hits.
Historical figures are only available for 2000 onwards Site traffic figures are as follows:
2001 2002 2003 DfES: www.dfes.gov.uk Visits 5,479,049 13,037,249 Unique visitors 1,293,000 1,148,743 4,189,925 Page impressions 43,700,000 74,491,274 160,164,079 242W
2003 Customer portals Visits 4,390,139 Unique visitors 1,572,963 Page impressions 53,744,094
2003 Curriculum online:www.curriculumonline.gov.uk Visits 495,408 Unique visitors 429,804 Page impressions 4,100,100