Thank you for your email regarding the Department of Trade and Industry’s website. As the Director responsible for overseeing our value for money audit on the Department of Trade and Industry, Sir John Bourn has asked me to take this forward and let you have a reply. I thought I should let you know that we are currently making enquiries with the Department and will provide you with a response in the New Year.

Peter Gray,
Director, Trade and Industry Area (Value for Money Audit)

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/govaccessibility/

Dear Sir John,

I’m concerned about the waste of public money in commissioning and developing the new website for the Department of Trade and Industry. The initial brief was for a website that met the guidelines for making sites available for people with disabilities. However, the end result was a site that did not meet the DTI’s own brief, but when I asked for an explanation of hy this was so (under freedom of information legislation), I was told that I would not be given an answer as it would cost more than £600 to answer my questions.

So, £00,000 has been spent on a website that (arguably) contravenes the Disability Discrimination Act, did not meet the initial design briefs, and there is no method of discovering why this happened.

I am also surprised that the DTI has no method of examining its own processes to find out what went wrong, and I believe this to be negligent with public money.

Are you able to find out what has happened?