To ask the Senior Deputy Speaker, further to his Written Answer on 7 March (HL5612),
what is the industry standard categorising service; who within the Parliamentary Digital
Service (PDS) is responsible for the service; whether there is a contract or other
service level agreement between PDS and the service; whether PDS pays for the service,
and if so, how much is paid annually; whether the service reports to PDS in respect
of its activities and decisions, and if so, how; whether its classification of websites
is advisory or mandatory; whether Parliament is free to over-ride its classification
of religion-based hate websites; and if so, why there are no plans to unblock the
"Religion of Peace" website.
<p>The Parliamentary Digital Service (PDS) uses the Check Point URL filtering service
to categorise websites, and currently blocks a range of categories of website from
the Parliamentary Estate, including “Hate/Racism”. PDS does not control which websites
are put into which category by the filtering service; this is an automated process
conducted at an industry level.</p><p>It is not possible to provide an accurate figure
regarding the annual cost of the service as it is one of a number of services provided
within a contract. With over one billion websites to categorise, it is not practicable
for the filtering service to report to PDS in respect of its categorising decisions
for particular websites. While it would be possible for PDS to unblock a website that
has been included in a blocked category, there are no plans to unblock the “Religion
of Peace” website, which has been included in the “Hate/Racism” category, because
the site does not appear to have been incorrectly categorised.</p><p> </p>
