Apparently, DWP doesn't know how much the Jobcentre Plus website costs...
Dear Sir or Madam,
Under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, please supply:
1) The cost of setting up the Job Search funtionality on the
Jobcentre website2) Annual maintenance cots for this section of the website
3) Either i) Whether any reduction or repayment has been secured
based on the fact that the search function does not perform
correctly.; or ii) If in fact the search is intended to perform in
such a manner (ignoring specified distances etc) copies of the
minutes of meetings or consultations that led to this odd decision.Thank you for your help.
Yours faithfully,
Matt Raven
Reply:
Dear Matt Raven,
Thank you for your request for information which asked
us to supply: 1) The cost of setting up the Job Search functionality on the Jobcentre Plus website 2) Annual maintenance costs for this section of the website 3) Either i) Whether any reduction or repayment has been secured based on the fact that the search function does not perform correctly.; or ii) If in fact the search is intended to perform in such a manner (ignoring specified distances etc) copies of the minutes of meetings or consultations that led to this odd decision.
We apologise for the late reply to your request but we did ensure that we comprehensively searched for all relevant sources of information before releasing our reply.
Response
The job search is part of a combined service that provides job search functionality across a number of DWP platforms, including the Jobcentre Plus website; the Directgov website; Jobpoints in Jobcentre Plus offices as well as other locations, such as libraries and supermarkets; DWP internal databases and other DWP systems. The set up costs form part of wider IT development contracts, so it is not possible to separate out the costs for setting up the specific functionality on the website. Similarly the annual maintenance costs are part of a wider hosting and support contract, and again it is not possible for us to extract the cost for the job search on the website.
A reduction or repayment has not been secured because the search function performs as originally specified. The decision to override the location request was taken by the Employment Service before they joined DWP in 2005 and consequently copies of minutes of meetings are no longer available.
However, the Jobs and Skills service on Directgov does allow job vacancies to be searched via location, and when the Jobcentre Plus website closes in March 2010; this will be the primary online search function.
If you have any queries about this letter please contact me quoting the reference number above.
Yours sincerely,
DWP Central FoI Team
FoI Link: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/cost_of_jobcentre_plus_website_j
So the Government doesn't break up costs of their IT contracts...