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We have already responded to feedback in number of ways, and a number of initiatives are already planned. As well as the matter of the range of users, the team also had to accommodate the significant issue of the number of ways in which people now seek to access the website. There has been a huge shift to using mobile digital technology to access it, which was not something that the previous system was capable of sustaining.

I invite Alan Balharrie to answer that.

That is a suitably pejoratively phrased question, convener. As someone who does not access websites and things, I might find these things complicated, too. It certainly is the case that, if you were an internal building user, you understood how the previous website worked and were familiar with your way around it. However, it was a hugely lugubrious website. It had hundreds of thousands of documents in it, which were slowing down its operation and decreasing its efficiency. That is unlike any website for any Government department or Parliament that you would expect to come across. Our content was extremely dense and, if you were not one of the internal building users who was familiar with the site, you would not have had a good experience using it.

Have we got a final product that is incapable of evolving further? I am sure that that is not the case. I know that Susan Duffy is very much involved in engagement around how the website might progress, so it might be worth while hearing from her at this point.

I think that the answer to that is largely yes, and by the corporate body, on the advice that we received.

Michelle will come in, but the corporate body was made aware of both the overall project when it was launched back in 2017 and the years over which it would run. The budget for the website was not separately identified in each year. It is accommodated in the overall IT and digital budgets, so there was never any exceptional item. It is one of those things, along with maintenance of the building, that have to be planned for on an annualised basis over a period of time. Therefore, the corporate body was aware of it, in the sense that we understood the case for the new website and had been given an indicative idea of the likely cost of and timescale for website development. However, given that lead times for different bits of the project can be compromised in any one year, it was not necessarily the case that any one part of it was scheduled within the budget and identified separately as the bit of the website development that would happen in that particular calendar year.

You are right that it is reasonable for a Parliament to point to other Government services’ websites, because we are not a commercial business—we are a Parliament with an obligation to both internal and external users to ensure that we have a website that is fit for purpose with the capacity to serve the Parliament not just for a year but for the decade ahead.

I think that I know the reason for that, because we also asked that question, but Alan Balharrie should probably answer.

I will ask Michelle Hegarty to come in, but that report exists to some extent—we have a red-amber-green traffic-light warning report on all the risks and developments in the Parliament and on the progress that has been made against them. It is not that such things come to us only if we ask for them—we are proactively alerted to them.

The website project came largely within budget and on time, with the caveat that the pandemic complicated things because resources had to be diverted away from its development to things such as the hybrid working of Parliament, for which we had no advance notice, provision or additional staffing that we could deploy, other than those people who were working on the website at the time. I would therefore take issue with the idea that the corporate body is not being advised of all those things.

It was not £3 million in one year and the £100 million is an annual figure.

I will make one general observation and perhaps make a constructive point.

As Michelle Hegarty identified, in terms of the high-level information that the committee receives, we are looking at one particular project; there have been questions about why there was not more information in relation to the project. I think that if we were to drill down into all the projects that the corporate body is overseeing and progressing, and provide the committee with that level of detail on them all, that would not be helpful or productive either for the progress of the budget or for the committee’s understanding of where it wanted to focus its attention.

If, on the other hand, there is a particular area of development in Parliament that is the responsibility of the corporate body and on which, ahead of the budget presentation, you would like to have more detailed information—such as you are perhaps seeking today in relation to the website—the corporate body could supply such detail in advance of its presentation to the finance committee.

It was you who said that, Alan.