The information requested is as follows:
(i) The Department has deployed Blackberry services to staff since 2006 through the Office of Government Commerce’s mobile telecommunication services contract. From the records available the cost of purchasing the Blackberry hardware each year since 2006 has been:
Ministers Special advisers Other staff 2006 — — 16,800 2007 1,120 1,120 68,880 2008 280 280 8,400 2009 280 — 27,695
The 2009 figure includes the costs of recent hardware upgrades.
The operating costs for BERR’s Blackberry service is only held from 2008 and includes costs for Ministers and special advisors:
Other staff (£) 2006 n/a 2007 n/a 2008 132,128 2009 154,902 n/a = Not available.
(b) The Department uses the Office of Government Commerce’s mobile telecommunication services contract to provide official mobile telephones to staff. No cost information is available on the provision of mobile hardware. No detailed information is available on the cost of the services that have been deployed to Ministers and their special advisors. During this period all Ministers and special advisors have had access to mobile telephones from a central pool of handsets operated by the ministerial support office. The only information available is the total cost of the mobile telephones services operated by the ministerial support office and for those services provided to other BERR staff for each year since 2008.
Mobile telephone costs for ministerial support office Total cost of staff mobiles provided 2008 23,541 218,317 2009 24,541 192,868