Nowadays, the web is a pretty fundamental communication tool. As such, it is understandable — perhaps essential — that elected representatives use it to communicate with voters. Normally this will involve some sort of cost. Naturally, therefore, we must ask at what point the costs of a politician running a website exceed the benefits.

I guess most people would say that £13,000 is far above what the taxpayer can be expected to pay. Yet according to the Scottish Parliament website, one Labour MSP, Charlie Gordon, has claimed £12,822.62 in “website costs” among his expenses. That is over ten grand more than the next highest claim.

Duncan has taken a deeper look at the expense figures, which he has obtained using the Scottish Parliament’s MSP Allowances search facility. The graph he has produced shows just how large the claim is compared to others.

It is worth pointing out that Charlie Gordon’s website aims to set the record straight, saying that the Scottish Parliament-provided figure is an error and that the website costs were actually around £1,700. Even if that turns out to be the case, it would still make Charlie Gordon’s website among the very most expensive.

It has to be said that Charlie Gordon’s website is actually rather good, with quite comprehensive details of his activities in Parliament and all the other information you would expect to find on a parliamentarian’s website.

Stuart McMillan’s is the lowest of the 36 claims at just £24.20 (1.4% of Charlie Gordon’s £1,700 figure). His website is not as comprehensive. But it more or less does the job. The site is basically a blog which is regularly updated with news, with contact information provided on the sidebar.

What is interesting is that Mr McMillan has managed to run a perfectly presentable and user-friendly website with the use of a service which is totally free — Blogger. My guess is that the lion’s share of his “website cost” is for the purchase of the domain name.

Moreover, Duncan’s post points out that 93 MSPs didn’t claim expenses under website costs at all. Maybe all 93 of those MSPs don’t have a website, though I doubt it.

There are plenty of free and open-source tools out there which can bring the costs of running a website right down, as Stuart McMillan demonstrates. I think I prefer the Stuart McMillan model to Charlie Gordon’s.

Update 02/02/2009: Heather left a comment pointing out that publicly funded websites must ensure that their websites are accessible to the disabled in order to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act. You can read her post on MSPs’ website costs and DDA compliance.