Annual costs of Scottish Government websites: FOI release

Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.


FOI reference: FOI/18/00809
Date received: 14 March 2018
Date responded: 12 April 2018

Information requested

I would like to submit an FOI for an up to date figure for the annual running costs of the two Scottish Government websites and for the expected date at which the current Scottish Government website will close and the beta Scottish Government website will become the only updated website. If it is different from the closure date I would also like to know the date at which all content that is planned to be moved will have been transferred to the new website and when the new website will be taken out of beta development.

Response

The current annual running costs of gov.scot and beta.gov.scot, including hosting, security and domains, are £79,125 ex VAT and £26,551 ex VAT respectively.

In the case of beta, this is lower than previously reported in FOI/17/01819 /publications/foi-17-01819 (August 2017) which stated the costs were £56,066 ex VAT. This saving is due to consolidation of Amazon Web Services (AWS) as hosting provider and improved system management.

Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy. We are currently working to transition outstanding content onto beta.gov.scot. Our main priority is to ensure the public have access to a user-friendly, fully-functioning website, containing all relevant content, and that will dictate the final date for moving to one site.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses

Contact

Please quote the FOI reference

Central Enquiry Unit
Email: ceu@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000

The Scottish Government
St Andrew's House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG

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