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17 June 2010

Summary of request

The HFEA was asked to explain how content on its website was changed without the 'page last updated' footer being updated.

 

HFEA response

The HFEA public website is maintained and managed using a proprietary content management system - Red Dot. Within this system we use standard XHTML 1.1 coding and CSS style sheets which conform to World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards. Content management systems – including this one – operate in a modular way. This means that web pages are built using several reusable blocks of information. It also means that individual blocks on a page can be amended separately without affecting others. When this happens the page date of publication does not change. This is updated automatically only when the whole page is re-published. This explains why, when the block relating to the phrase 'also study the mitochondria' was amended to include these words, the date for the page itself did not change.
 
The relevant information block containing the phrase 'also study the mitochondria' in relation to research licence R0145 was not updated until July 2009. This followed receipt by the HFEA of a progress report in April 2009 informing it of a change of objectives to research project R0145: determining how mitochondrial DNA mutations segregate between blastomeres and the derivation of hESC lines from embryos donated by couples in which the female partner carried mitochondrial mutations. The updated objectives did not change the licensed activities of the research project, and the project continued to meet the statutory tests for the grant of a licence. The centre did not request the incorporation of new activities to that licence between 15 May 2008 and 28 September 2009. When we received PQ HL3062 from the Department of Health on 24 March 2010 we realised we had not updated the consolidated lay summary on our website. So we did so then and informed the Department of this.
 
We do not hold documents containing evidence of changes made to HFEA web pages or web content.

Page last updated: 09 August 2012

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