Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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314. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the external company undertaking an audit of his departmental website; the cost of the audit; the timeframe for its completion; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45858/17]

Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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334. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the last time his Department's website was revamped or remodelled; the cost of same; if he or his Department officials have been consulted regarding creating one stand alone online Government portal website; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [46007/17]

Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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335. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the investment in his Department’s website since 2011 including total associated costs incurred; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [46024/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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My Department’s website www.education.ieis an integral part of our communications activities, and, in particular, is used as:

- A public information service

- An instant point of access to the business of the Department and

- A tool for feedback, consultation and engagement.

Between 1 September 2016 and 31 of August 2017, there were over 7.2 million hits on this website.

Between 1 of January 2011 and 31 of October 2017, my Department spent €148,181.77 (ex-VAT) on the development, support maintenance, licencing and hosting of its website, www.education.ie.

The following is a breakdown of how this amount was spent by year:

My Department's website was subject to a redesign and rebuild this year (2017).  This work was necessary to replace aging infrastructure ensure the compatibility of the site with modern browsers and devices and safeguard the security and integrity of the site.

The cost of this development as of 27/10/2017 was €24,675 (ex-vat).This spend was accounted for by 47 Professional Service Days @ €525 per diem on the redesign and testing of the website templates and the deployment of the existing site data onto a new cloud based infrastructure.

At present no external company is undertaking an audit of the department’s website.  However a comprehensive set of penetration tests were carried out on the new website and its supporting infrastructure in August 2017 by Blackberry / Encription Ireland, prior to the launch of the new website.  This testing cost €4,570 (ex-vat) and is included in the figure stated for expenditure on the website in 2017.

It is also envisioned that a further independent audit of my department's website will be carried out in Q1 of 2018, to ensure that it meets the required standards in terms of accessibility.

As part of the Government's eGovernment strategy 2017- 2020 the Office of the Government's Chief Information Officer is working on the development of a Digital Service Gateway - a single digital point where citizens can easily access information about the Government services that are available to them, including those services from my department.