§ Mr. HealdTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what the total annual cost of her Department's websites, including those of its agencies, was in the most recent year for which figures are available. [159514]
§ Alun MichaelThe use of websites is now a mainstream of communication for any organisation in the public sector or the private sector and for business units throughout any large organisation. Direct operating costs for the main Defra website (www.defra.gov.uk)—including technical and staff costs associated with hosting of the site, and staff costs for the central team with lead responsibility for updating and maintaining the content of the site—are estimated at around £294,000 for the financial year 2003–04.
Additional costs arise from the activities of a large number of staff in business units across the Department, contributing to the content of the website as part of their communications activities, but an overall cost for this could not be accurately estimated without incurring disproportionate cost.
A number of other websites are operated by the Department and its agencies, for which costs are either covered by the budgets for specific programmes (and not separately identified), or included within the above figures. Detailed information is not held centrally for other websites managed by the Department, its agencies and non-departmental public bodies, and could not be obtained without incurring disproportionate cost.