Question

To ask The Senior Deputy Speaker whether there are any websites that cannot be accessed on the parliament network; if so, what those websites are; and why they cannot be accessed.

Parliament uses an industry-standard web filtering and blocking solution across its Wi-Fi services, including visitor Wi-Fi. The system blocks categories of sites and content that are inappropriate for the parliamentary network environment, including pornographic material and sites intended to circumvent cyber security controls. The Parliamentary Digital Service does not control which websites are put into which category by the filtering service; this is an automated process conducted at an industry level. Parliament does not maintain a list of websites which cannot be accessed from its network, and any such list would be variable. PDS can unblock individual sites if they are assessed as safe and a specific request is made to them.