Liz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)
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Question 27: To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the number and cost of each website that falls under his Department's remit; the number of unique visitors per month to each website; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44975/10]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)
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My Department maintains eleven websites that provide information and mapping services to the wide range of stakeholders that have an interest in the areas for which my Department is responsible. There is a large variation in the number of unique visitors for each site as the following table shows, but this reflects the specialised nature of some of the technical communities that are being served. Whilst the numbers may be relatively small, these sites are a key source of information both to foreign companies interested in Irish mineral exploration, and to the higher education sectors. The type of scientific information is an important raw material in the context of the knowledge society.

The websites share common technologies so they are hosted together on shared servers in order to provide cost efficiencies. The technical support and update of information on the sites, is carried out by the Department's IT, technical and clerical staff as part of their normal functions. Because of this I am unable to give a breakdown of the costs for each individual site. The total cost of maintaining these websites including technical maintenance, ongoing development, and hosting charges was €178,000 in 2009. The total unique visits for all websites to-date for 2010, is 287,118, which is an average per month of 31,087.

The following table shows the individual site visitor details, as requested.

Briefing Note

Under the provisions of the Croke Park Agreement a strong emphasis has been placed on the increased use of shared services for the provision of corporate functions such as ISD, HR and Finance. An early implementation of the action plan prepared in respect of this Department has been an agreement that the Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Food (DAFF) that they will provide day-to-day ICT operational services to DCENR from early 2011. The Department currently uses the LGCSB (Local Government Computer Services Board) and HEAnet to host web services. It is expected that all the LGCSB hosted servers will be moved to DAFF in 2011 with a saving of approximately €70,000 per annum.

A large proportion of the information on the sites from the natural resources divisions are focused on technical or geological information, that while they have a small user base are important sources of information to the exploration and educational communities. The ability of these groups to focus on their specific geographic area of interest and self-service their information requests is an important implementation of an eGovernment service with savings in the staff time that would otherwise be spent servicing these requests. The GSI sites have approximately a terabyte of raw survey data from the Infomar seabed surveys available for download free of charge.