Software used by our communications team

You asked

I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request the following information from you:

1. The software used by the Media/Communications team to manage press enquiries, send press releases and maintain a press contacts database. Please specify the value and the expiry date of any contracts associated with the tools you use.

2. The software used by the Media/Communications team to monitor the media. Please specify the value and the expiry date of any contracts associated with the tools you use.

3. The software used by the Media/Communications team to manage and store interactions with stakeholders (e.g. the media, regulators, government agencies, the community, the public). Please specify the value and the expiry date of any contracts associated with the tools you use.

4. The software used by the Public Affairs or any other relevant team to monitor the political environment and Parliament and log interactions with politicians, civil servants, lobbying bodies, trade unions, etc. Please specify the value and the expiry date of any contracts associated with the tools you use.

We said

Thank you for your request.

Please find our response to your request as follows. We have numbered your questions for ease of reference.

1. To manage enquiries and send press release we use Lotus Notes databases adapted by our in-house developers. Lotus Notes is part of our central IT estate and it is not possible to attribute any specific costs to this particular database.

   A press contacts service is provided by RoxhIll Media under an annual contract of £4950 due to expire in March 2019.

2. We have a monitoring agreement with Kantar Ltd which expires at the end of March 2021 . Its value is variable and depends on the number of relevant articles identified by the supplier.

3. We currently use Trello to track engagement with stakeholders. There is no contract or cost associated with this.

   For official consultations, the External Affairs team use the Citizen Space platform to coordinate all contact with stakeholders and their responses. This costs £18,000 and is renewed annually, with the current contract running until April 2019.

4. The interactions are logged on LotusNotes and Sharepoint. Monitoring is from external supplier, DeHavilland. The contract value is £8,741 with the contract due to expire on the 15 November 2018.