A quick peruse of MySociety’s excellent TheyWorkForYou.com reveals the Conservatives have been rather busy lately tabling a raft of parliamentary questions (PQs) – several dozen in fact – about the cost of redesigning government websites.   Specifically, the sums spent by Whitehall on revamping their web offerings since 27 June 2007, the date Tony Blair handed over the reins of power to Gordon Brown.

Sure enough, the PQ responses made brief headlines towards the tail-end of last year, when the Telegraph reported that government departments had spent £4m on redesigning their websites.  The Taxpayers' Alliance lobby group immediately jumped on what they saw as yet another example of Whitehall waste, with Campaign Director Matthew Elliot commenting:  ”This astonishing £4 million figure shows departments must concentrate on content rather than the appearance of government websites. Many of these sites look a lot better than they actually are.”

However the outrage may have been slightly premature. Because since then, a further 13 government departments and agencies have come forward with details of their spending.  And as UKAuthority.com reports, their responses bring the total cost of Whitehall’s website redesigns to £10m – more than double the £4m sum previously thought.

The figures include a £513,000 redesign of the Department for Health website and £216,000 spent by the Department for Work and Pensions on a web redesign last year.  Work by the Department for International Development to redevelop its website has also cost close to £1 million, according to the figures ministers disclosed.

Some of this work was clearly important to improve the quality of government websites. For example the Ministry of Justice, which redeveloped its site last year, reported that visitor numbers to justice.gov.uk had more than doubled since the Department was formed in 2007.

Other departments’ responses were somewhat more difficult to comprehend, such as how the Communities and Local Government managed to run up a whopping £1.2m bill developing its new – and very unremarkable – departmental website. Or why the Office for National Statistics, say, needed to pay £218,000 in July 2009 to enhance its online ‘Publication Hub’, after already spending £4m on improving its online operations.

An interesting footnote to this is that the Central Office of Information is drawing up guidance to help departments evaluate whether their websites are useful, usable and deliver value for money.

This comes in response to a National Audit Office report several years ago which found ‘little improvement’ in the quality of government websites since 2002, noting around a quarter of organisations could not say how much their site cost.   Judging by a number of responses to the Tories’ PQ, many departments and agencies still can’t.  And if costs can’t be measured, can they be managed?  It might finally be time for some answers.

• Presentations from the Scotweb2 event on 19 June... slides from Learning Pool (Social Learning: Does it return the investment?) and also Lichfield DC's Stuart Harrison on the Twhys, Thows and Twherefores of Twitter.  Read a brief event summary here and for more detail see the real-time coverage of the day's proceedings.
• Local Government 3.0: How councils can respond to the new web agenda is the new pamphlet from the Local Government Information Unit think-tank. Download a copy here. On a related note, Simon Wakeman interviews Andy Sawford, LGUI chief exec on the communications issues councils  face today.
• An interesting list of 40 social media staff guidelines
• Following on from the launch of Data.gov, the US Government continues its drive towards greater transparency and accountability with USASpending.gov, a new website which lets the public to track spending on public sector IT projects. Tech guru Tim O'Reilly gives his take.
• A video introducing Birmingham City Council's Podnosh's 'Be Vocal' site, part of the Birmingham Open City project which is one of the Timely Information for Citizens pilots funded by CLG. (via Dave Briggs)
• Sarah Lay of Derbyshire County Council talks about council's use of social media in the recent local elections, recorded at Localgovcamp. (via Podnosh) More from Sarah's blog here.
• Really useful Twitter tools for Community and Communications Professionals (via Carl Haggerty)
• In a fascinating post, Emma Mulqueeny updates us on progress with the Home Office's digital engagement strategy. Emma writes about the challenges which have cropped up and how, where possible, these are being addressed.
• DMCS has published an action plan for the Digital Britain White Paper on 16 June.
• And finally... the Department for Transport makes its debut on Twitter, alas its bio states: 'Please direct queries via the 'Contact us' section of the website'.  Oh well... (via Neil Williams)