The Scottish Government

Can you please detail, for each year since your public website was launched, how much money has been spent on creating, developing and running it.

The figures below reflect the general cost of technical and editorial development and operation of the website.

Information Systems and Information Services (ISIS) - hosting cost for servers

Licence cost for servers in 2008 - £5,181

Communications Directorate - annual spend on web development and related projects (including licenses)

Note that the ISIS hosting cost covers the cost of a fully managed hosting service provided to the Scottish Government by its supplier, BrightSolid. While the service provides servers which were specifically put in place for the Scottish Government website there are a number of other websites which have subsequently been added into this service e.g. Crown Office which make use of this service at no additional cost.

There was an additional cost to hosting in 2008-09 to pay for upgrading of hardware.

Licence costs were generally included in the cost of hosting and provided by the supplier. Database licences were required in 2008 to licence the use of a newer version of the database system. The database system is used to provide a number of websites in addition to the Scottish Government website.

Where the costs have been incurred with external providers, please list the company in question.

The principal external providers of web development services since 2005 were Whitespace, Civic UK, and StormID. In 2009, after a competitive tendering process, a new roster of nine companies was introduced which includes the three named agencies.

The hosting contract held by Brightsolid is a separate arrangement.

Please could you also provide the number of unique visitors to your website broken down by year.

The website is audited by ABCe each November to produce an average monthly total from which an annual total can be extrapolated.

Unique users per month (audited)