RESTRICTEDWORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONWT/BFA/W/71
8 April 2002
(02-2032)
Committee on Budget, Finance and Administration
WTO W EBSITE – STAFFING REQUIREMENTS AND CONTRACTING OUT
1. The guiding principles for the WTO website  are those set by the Members, in the General
Council, to achieve greater transparency by making the organization more accessible to the public, the
media and to Members.  Maintaining the WTO website in English, French and Spanish respects the
will of WTO members to make all WTO publications, information and documents available in those
three working languages.  WTO members express consistent support for use of the website as a meansfor access and transparency.  This confidence is borne out by the continuous increase in the number of
individuals from around the world who make use of the website.  An average of over 500,000
individuals make use of the site every month (a total of 564,840 for March 2002) from over 150
countries.
2. The WTO Internet team  at present is comprised of two regular positions (grades 7 and 5)
and two temporary assistance positions which have been maintained as such for the past two years.
The IMRD budget submission for 2002 proposed transforming the two temporary positions to regular
positions. It was also proposed to invest CHF 150,000 on new Internet software to automate many of
the functions now carried out manually. In the long run such investment will save the WTO money by
making it possible to carry out more work with the existing four-person team. The investmentsproposed also included development of a more efficient Search engine to facilitate users finding
information in a site that now has over 15,000 pages in English, French and Spanish.
3. These budget requests should be seen in comparison with the investments made, and the
number of regular staff employed, by other international organizations for their websites. In a survey
of 26 International Organizations conducted by the ILO last year it was found that though the WTO
has one of the busiest and largest sites in this group it has the least number of regular  positions  (see
table I) to maintain and develop the site. Table II presents information from the survey on staffing andinvestments.WT/BFA/W/71
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Table I
Table II
4. Contracting or Outsourcing work of the website: we already contract out a good deal of
the work required for the website. This includes the contract for technical maintenance of the
website's specialized web servers (computers) and security infrastructure. We also contract out
conversion of large masses of texts to html formats, mostly to firms in developing countries.  We areconvinced of the merits of contracting out.  It is through outsourcing of much of our publications
production that we've managed to reduce the Publications printing budget in IMRD from CHF
700,000 in 1997 to CHF 193,000 this year, while producing three times as many publications and CD-
ROMs.  From our experience we know what kind of work is most suitable for contracting out and
which tasks are handled most efficiently by regular staff.Comparison with other
international  organizations
E E EFS537
195
7392
24 3 8
0100200300400500600
W TO UNHCR W FP UNCTADusers
f-t s taffThousands of users
Full-tim e staff
Organization Regular website staff Investment in 2001
for design and development
UNCHR 4 CHF 231,000
UNESCO 20 CHF 165,000
UNOCHA 8 CHF 350,000
UNRSD 9 CHF 379,000
UNCTAD 8 not available
WTO 2 CHF 60,000WT/BFA/W/71
Page 3
5. Out of 26 International Organizations which participated in the survey of their website
activities last year none outsources their website. The reasons are similar to those of the WTO:
• Daily interaction with Divisions providing web content: the webteam works in close collaboration
with designated experts in each Division.  There are several meetings every day between
members of the webteam and content providers.
• Knowledge of the organization: Internet team members know the organization and the site well
enough to handle most material appropriately. Giving instructions to the necessary level of detail
for an outside company to handle each new piece of work would be almost as time-consuming as
actually doing the work ourselves.
• Synchronisation of English, French, Spanish sites: every change to the site needs to be translated
into 2 other languages and the translations inserted correctly.  Add to this the fact that there are
textual corrections and modifications made right up to (and beyond) the last minute.
• Handling of confidential materials and Internet security: For security reasons it is not possible to
give outsiders access to WTO databases which contain both public and restricted materials.
Finding a technical solution to allow remote updating without compromising security or
performance would be a costly exercise.
• Urgent requests and tight deadlines. This happens nearly every day when new materials must be
posted promptly, accurately and in three languages, such as for Dispute reports, newsannouncements.
• Finally, the cost of paying consultants to do the type of detailed work required is too costly – an
average of US60/CHF 110   per hour for routine tasks.  We estimate that it requires about 7,000
hours per year to maintain the WTO websites in English, French and Spanish.  The cost of
outsourcing that amount of work would be more than CHF 700,000 per year. The cost of the
current four-person Internet team is about CHF 230,000 per year.
6. The bottom line  is that outsourcing can be viable for some tasks, such as those we are
already outsourcing, but not for day-to-day running of a website as large and complex as that of the
WTO.
7. The WTO website has become the most important source of access to the WTO  for the
public, media and for members – particularly those with no, or limited, representation in Geneva. For
this reason and for other reasons listed above IMRD recommends that the budget requests it made for
2002 should be re-considered for the next budget cycle. More precisely, the two temporary assistance
positions on the four-person Internet team should be made into regular positions. Further, the WTO
should make an investment to improve the techno logical functioning of the website, which would
limit future needs for additional staff while greatly improving the ability of users to find the
information they want.
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