The United Nations may be a massive beast, but it has shown great agility in using its website to defend its reputation. This should not be a surprise. International organisations have long used the web to solve another problem - how to give the outside world access to a sprawling mass of constantly changing information - so they are more used than most to putting it at the centre of their communication efforts. Unfortunately, this familiarity has also bred carelessness - there is more disorder in this group of sites than in any other I have looked at.

Paul Volcker delivered his second interim report on the Oil for Food Programme - covering possible conflicts of interest involving Kofi Annan - on Tuesday. The UN used its site (www.un.org) to respond on the same day. Journalists going into the News Centre found the lead story was a piece summarising Mr Annan’s reaction. A link from this led to a full transcript of the press conference he gave, with another leading to the reaction by his chef de cabinet, and a third to a dedicated Oil-for-Food Inquiry (OFFI) area. Anyone clicking the Secretary-General link on the home page would get to the same area via Mr Annan’s own section.