Written question asked by Brooks Newmark (Conservative) on Thursday, 25 January 2007, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 29 January 2007. It was answered by Geoffrey Hoon (Labour) on Thursday, 1 February 2007 on behalf of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Departmental Expenditure

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how much was spent by her Department on buying, operating and supporting (a) all commercial software products and (b) software products produced by Microsoft in each of the last three years.

Answer: As the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) operates devolved budgets the information needed to answer the hon. Member’s question is not held centrally and could be collated only at disproportionate cost.However, the hon. Member may wish to know that:"the FCO’s overall spend on Information Technology (excluding consultancy and internal staff costs, but including software, equipment and installation) in the last three years was: 2003-04 £13.0 million; 2004-05 £18.7 million; 2005-06 £12.0 million; and""in June 2005 we signed an Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft providing the products needed for our core strategic systems at a cost of approximately £1.7 million per year. In addition, we have a support agreement for our strategic desktop system costing £601,000 in 2005 and £631,000 in 2006."

Secondary information