To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how much the Targeting Benefit Thieves section of his Department’s website costs to run each year; and what the initial implementation cost of this section of the website was. (249019)

There are no separately quantifiable set-up or running costs for the Targeting Benefit Thieves section of the Department’s website.

Maintenance of DWP websites is mostly carried out by the Department’s own in-house digital media team. It is not possible for us to quantify internal staff costs, because in most cases, staff are engaged in more than one role. In addition, we are unable to establish accurately our infrastructure costs because they form part of a wider departmental IT contract.

DWP is currently working with the COI to develop a standardised method for quantifying website costs across Government. We will be implementing this standard from March 2009 in line with the current timetable.