Examination of witnesses (Questions 360
- 379)
WEDNESDAY 14 JUNE 2000
SIR RICHARD
MOTTRAM, MR
JOHN BALLARD,
MR TOM
ADAMS and MR
ALAN EVANS
Mrs Dunwoody
360. Let us have the DVLA, web master.
(Sir Richard Mottram) This all fits into a much wider
government agenda about electronic government and as part of that
agenda we talk across the whole Department, including the agencies,
about how we can best deliver that agenda. If, for example, one
of our agencies gives a very low priority to either its web site
or to electronic government generally, that would be dealt with
at corporate level across the Department as a whole.
(Mr Evans) There is also in the Cabinet Office a new
media team working to the e-Envoy, Alex Allan, on consistent guidelines
and practice across government web sites.
Mr Gray
361. What is an e-Envoy
(Sir Richard Mottram) Alex Allan is the e-Envoy who
has been brought in to superintend under Ministers the government's
efforts to improve its performance on e-government and e-commerce.
He just has the label "e-Envoy".
362. A sort of tsar, I suppose.
(Sir Richard Mottram) Well, yes, I suppose he is.
If he had not been an envoy he would have been a tsar, yes, exactly.
He started a few months ago.
Chairman
363. What is the purpose of having the two languages
there? I can understand that an individual going in might want
to choose to go into Welsh but does it really help to make it
easy for people to use?
(Sir Richard Mottram) I think in the case of the DVLA,
as most of the Agency is based in Wales, it is being sensitive
to those concerns. I do not think people have difficulty in deciding
which side to go. I am sure that is why they do it.
Mrs Dunwoody: What information do we get apart
from this? Can we have a further look at some other pictures?
We will stick with the English version.
Chairman
364. How does it tell me what the agency actually
does? As I understand it, it is quite easy if you want to go to
some of the forms, but what about actually getting a simple explanation
of what the agency does?
(Sir Richard Mottram) I think that is a good question,
Chairman. I even asked the same question about our own site, whether
our own site is sufficiently clear at the beginning in saying
to people, "This is what we do. If you are interested in
this, go here. If you are interested in that, go there."
Mrs Dunwoody: Let us try "What's New".
Mr Gray
365. I like the FAQ, frequently asked questions.
(Sir Richard Mottram) A lot of the people who access
our site do it for either educational or professional purposes
and I think it is very successful there. But for people who are
interested in service delivery, like, "How do I get a driving
licence?", is it clear if they come into our site how they
go through and achieve that? Those are the sorts of questions
we need to ask.
Chairman: Can we just go back to "What's
New"?
Dr Ladyman
366. One of the things it seems to me on your
web site which would not be resource intensive is lists of what
is not there. You have said that it is very difficult to go for
historical information and I can understand that. But if you are
sitting at home on a dial-up line with a 33K modem, and every
time you click something you have to wait for the screen to pass,
you cannot navigate through a site like yours in order to rule
out the particular planning guidance policies which are not listed
there. You assume they are there somewhere and you keep looking
for them. If you cannot get round to putting these things on to
the web, at least if you said at the beginning, "PPG12: sorry,
it is not here", people would at least stop flicking through
it and it would be less frustrating.
(Sir Richard Mottram) Yes. I think we should look
at that.
(Mr Adams) We do have a search for database relating
to planning and if you like I can take you into it. If a document
is on the web site in full text there is a live link to it.
(Mr Evans) I think it is a fair criticism that we
do not immediately point out if there is a list of documents where
only some of them are available in full text.
(Sir Richard Mottram) We need to look at that.
Chairman
367. On that it says "Business Plan for
1998/99", and that is "What's New". Do you not
think they might have a more up to date version?
(Sir Richard Mottram) I would hope so, Chairman. I
will take that away.
Mr Benn
368. Going back to your own site, do you have
a master index? I think we saw an example there where, when you
had gone into "Regeneration" there was a long list of
materials which are very useful but people might not necessarily
click on the right sub-head. On the parliamentary intranet there
is essentially A, B, C and you click on that and you find the
sort of index that people will be used to. The second question
is, what is your policy as far as putting on your own site links
to other sites that might be of interest for people visiting yours
and in particular links to non-governmental organisations that
have concerns and policies in the areas that the Department is
responsible for?
(Mr Adams) We are working on an alphabetical index
for the site as a whole. As you can imagine, it is a tremendous
task and getting the cross-references is very complex. The maintenance
of that index itself would be a resource problem.
(Sir Richard Mottram) The answer is, we agree with
you. It needs to be addressed. When are we getting this done up?
(Mr Adams) The index alone would be several months'
work.
(Sir Richard Mottram) I will look at that again in
the light of your comments. On the links in to other sites, we
do link in to other government sites. For instance, if we go into
"Regeneration" we find that in there we are cross-referring
to documents generated by outside bodies who have related sites.
To an extent we are doing that. It is an interesting question
about how far we should go on this. If you wanted to get into,
say, the Number 10 site, you can do that. If you go in on individual
domains there is data in relation to outside bodies. It is a very
fine point how much outside data we should put on that site.
Mrs Dunwoody
369. What have you said about Parliament?
(Sir Richard Mottram) I should have checked this in
advance, what it says. (After a pause) There you are. What
we say is what you say.
Mrs Dunwoody: That is one thing you have got
right.
Mr Benn
370. Say Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace or
Transport 2000, those organisations that people might be interested
in having a look at to see what Government is saying, are there
any links to any of those NGOs on the site currently?
(Sir Richard Mottram) No.
371. Is there any difficulty in principle in
putting such links on?
(Sir Richard Mottram) I think we would have to think
rather carefully about doing that because the issue would be which
one should we link to. I might have views myself about the relative
contributions of different NGOs. I do not think it would be right
if I were defining which ones you could access via our web site.
I think that is quite difficult. Where the government was, say,
co-funding a programme, which obviously we do a lot of, research
of various kinds and so on, that would be easier in those circumstances.
(Mr Evans) This is also an area where the new media
team in the Cabinet Office are looking at, better navigability
between and across government sites so that somebody coming in,
say, from abroad, if they suddenly end up in the Number 10 site,
they can get easily and quickly into the DETR site.
Mr Donohoe
372. How many times have you had an analysis
done of the number of hits you have had?
(Sir Richard Mottram) We keep a score of all the hits
on a regular basis. We will show you the hits. We can explain
a bit about what this tells you. It is under "Access Figures".
There we go. This is for the four week period to 28 May and it
was roughly four million. Successful requests 3.8 million.
(Mr Evans) Those are accesses to pages, so one person
could get several different accesses if they went to different
parts of the site.
373. What is the most commonly used page?
(Mr Adams) The most commonly used page is the "What's
New" page, followed very closely by the "Consultation"
page index.
(Sir Richard Mottram) That is the index of all the
consultation documents we have issued. People are obviously accessing
the site to see what consultation documents we have published.
374. How many times of the day do you visit
it yourself?
(Sir Richard Mottram) A couple or three times probably.
Inside the Department we have access ourselves from our own computers
on the desk to this site. We can therefore access other sites
as well through this. Those accesses are not recorded here. These
are external hits, not internal hits.
375. If we look at four down, "Average
Successful Requests for a Day", how are you evaluating them?
(Sir Richard Mottram) Evaluating them where people
are unsuccessful, you mean?
376. No. How is it that you evaluate 72,000
or thereabouts "Successful Requests for a Day".? What
is a successful request?
(Mr Evans) Successful means they have actually got
into the site successfully, not that they are satisfied with what
they have found.
(Mr Adams) It means that someone has got into the
web page and it has successfully been delivered to their desk
top.
(Sir Richard Mottram) As it is passed it is stored.
Chairman
377. Let us take the question about gap funding.
Does that count as a success or a failure?
(Mr Adams) That is quite an interesting question because
that actually links to the search engine itself. At the moment
accesses into the search engine are not counted.
Mr Ladyman
378. But the search engine delivered you the
page, which would be a success. It just was not the right page.
(Sir Richard Mottram) If we opened the page it would
have been a success.
Mr Donohoe
379. How much is it costing per annum to run
that web site?
(Sir Richard Mottram) The direct cost inside the Directorate
of Communication is about £250,000. Then you would have to
also take into account that you were not getting the true cost
of it, the other bits of the Department in thinking about it.
(Mr Adams) It does not include staff costs.
(Sir Richard Mottram) I am misleading you, I think.
Mr Adams will tell us precisely what the £250,000 covers.
(Mr Adams) The direct cost to the Department is in
the region of about a quarter of a million pounds in invoices
that come in to us from suppliers and from the web posting facility.
(Sir Richard Mottram) But that does not include the
cost of people in the Directorate.
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