Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)
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Question 277: To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if he will provide an estimate of the cost of his Department's new website including hosting, designing, building and posting, the location at which the site is hosted; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [29262/12]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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The Department has recently developed two new websites – www.enterprise.gov.ie. and www.businessregulation.ie. The former, www.enterprise.gov.ie, will replace the Department's existing website which has remained substantially unchanged for over ten years. Infrastructure, including a content management system, is shared between the two websites. The latter, www.businessregulation.ie, brings together in one site information on regulation for over 30 Government bodies and, building on the architecture and design work of www.enterprise.gov.ie, was developed in response to a problem identified by business. Work on the websites and a new associated content management system is still under way so the final cost of development is not yet to hand. Based on work carried out to date and the estimated effort of work on hand, the final cost of the two websites is estimated to be approx €83,000.

Work carried out included initial design scoping and detailed design, wireframe design and layout, design, development and coding of html and style sheets for page templates, design, development and testing of code to integrate to application programming interfaces of all feed content systems, functionality testing, delivery and deployment of the CMS and developed systems on production servers, security review and hardening of servers and deployment of firewalls, integration of search functionality, and training of staff in the use of the content management system. The site is hosted in Ireland. The new website will, over time, replace the existing Departmental website which has remained substantially unchanged for over ten years.

Design and development work is being carried out following an open tendering process in a very competitive market. The work being undertaken includes the delivery of a new web content management system which gives the Department a modern and flexible tool for managing web content and opens up options for consolidating existing diverse website platforms. This incremental approach minimises risk and optimises the use of constrained personnel resources. The new website platform presents a much more sophisticated tool than the existing website to draw data from the Department's diverse Offices and Agencies in real time to provide a holistic view of the enterprise agenda. As a first step in maximising the value of the new web content management system, the new platform is also being used to host the new www.businessregulation.ie website which delivers guidance and support for businesses in understanding the regulations which apply to them.