This is pretty normal for government procurement, though. and in fact, most large organisation procurement. There's a whole wall of standards that the supplier must meet, e.g. ISO9000 that your little web-dev shop almost certainly doesn't. They won't buy from a supplier that is likely to go out of business. There's a ton of other criteria that you've got to meet to get the business. If there's any, even the slightest, chance that buying from a business might one day reflect badly on the civil servant in the procurement office, then they won't buy from that business. The civil servant has nothing to lose from saying "no" and runs a risk if they say "yes".
Businesses that do meet these criteria charge like wounded bulls. In part because they know that all the other businesses that the govt could turn to will also charge like wounded bulls.
There would've been an RFP for this, surely? Which means PwC was chosen to deliver this ahead of n number of other tenderers. I'd be curious to see what other proposals there were and the decision-making that went into choosing the winner.
When I checked the site this morning, the first impression I had was: They could have just linked to deeplearning[.]ai and that would have been much better.
In the past, expensive contracts like this were handed out as rewards to Tory donors. Help fund the party's re-election, and your company will receive a cushy reward. See also the Cash-for-Honours scandal, where the Labour party were also found giving preference to donors in the selection for lordships.
> Labour taking free staff from scandal-hit consulting firms
> [...] The party has quietly accepted more than £230,000 worth of free staff from ‘big four’ accounting firms PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Ernst & Young (EY) since Keir Starmer took over as leader in 2020.
Still, I'm sure it's a complete coincidence that the ruling party was gifted £230k of free services from PwC, then brought a static website from PwC for £4.1 million of taxpayer money.
There is this thing that happens in USA where RFPs are issued in such a way only one vendor could pass the mark - does that happen in UK? Reckon PwC has connections to make that happen
It does to an extent but less so particularly from central government.
The tender is here [0], the approval process is usually pretty watertight. The contracts that go through this will have a paper trail. What you’ll likely find is that PWC has written a spec that meets the letter of the contract and they have delivered a site that meets the letter of their wording, which is what they’re good at. The fact that it didn’t actually solve the problem is inconsequential to PwC
Probably depends on the department. I do grant and loan assessments for Innovate UK, and they have a rigorous and largely (+) transparent method for assessment which I would be happy to explain in detail. If we award money, it's accompanied by a monitoring officer (I do that as well) who is subject area expert with project management business experience. The MO meets the project every one or three months to review progress and approve payment of an installation of the grant or loan. We certainly wouldn't hand over £4M without good reason!
(+ Some of the detail of the scoring matrix is not as transparent as we would like, but Innovate UK does take feedback and tries to improve it).
I started off from the press release on GOV.UK (as linked in OP and which is a paragon of virtue in web design) and followed the "Free AI foundations training" link and it all went south rather rapidly.
Its bold, brash and horrible. It does look like a set of links and its not immediately obvious where you start or what to do with it.
There are a few things that might be hyperlinks but the large weird rounded cornered sort of press me perhaps if you dare but I'm a bit flat and might kick your dog thing that might be a control or not but I'm purple and have an arrow ... ooh go on ... click me. Clicking around that area does move on to the next step which is just as obtuse.
The UK government want to write a cheque with our money for "Digital ID" whatever nebulous Tax + Services + Tracking that is... they can't even control costs on a tiny website, what is the cost of an everything site? Infinite pounds? Imagine what even a basic v1 spec for that looks like, it would probably never even be released.
A reminder the UKs Track and Trace apparently cost £29.3 billion of the £37bn allocated. Disgusting waste of money.
But at least Keir and the government will have cushy jobs to go to after they leave government.
I still think this is far higher than comparable countries and seems like a rip off. Any of the figures are extremely wasteful IMO. I wasn’t trying to suggest the app cost billions.
Clearly the site is intended for a few mega-employers to push out as "training". How many employees do you think need to take the training to recoup £4.1 million in GDP? Not many.
This is pretty normal for government procurement, though. and in fact, most large organisation procurement. There's a whole wall of standards that the supplier must meet, e.g. ISO9000 that your little web-dev shop almost certainly doesn't. They won't buy from a supplier that is likely to go out of business. There's a ton of other criteria that you've got to meet to get the business. If there's any, even the slightest, chance that buying from a business might one day reflect badly on the civil servant in the procurement office, then they won't buy from that business. The civil servant has nothing to lose from saying "no" and runs a risk if they say "yes".
Businesses that do meet these criteria charge like wounded bulls. In part because they know that all the other businesses that the govt could turn to will also charge like wounded bulls.
There would've been an RFP for this, surely? Which means PwC was chosen to deliver this ahead of n number of other tenderers. I'd be curious to see what other proposals there were and the decision-making that went into choosing the winner.
US: I see your £4.1M and raise you $2.1B [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HealthCare.gov#:~:text=estimat...
When I checked the site this morning, the first impression I had was: They could have just linked to deeplearning[.]ai and that would have been much better.
and that's before knowing about the £4M
In the past, expensive contracts like this were handed out as rewards to Tory donors. Help fund the party's re-election, and your company will receive a cushy reward. See also the Cash-for-Honours scandal, where the Labour party were also found giving preference to donors in the selection for lordships.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash-for-Honours_scandal
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/labour-pwc-ey-big-four-natw...
> Labour taking free staff from scandal-hit consulting firms
> [...] The party has quietly accepted more than £230,000 worth of free staff from ‘big four’ accounting firms PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Ernst & Young (EY) since Keir Starmer took over as leader in 2020.
Still, I'm sure it's a complete coincidence that the ruling party was gifted £230k of free services from PwC, then brought a static website from PwC for £4.1 million of taxpayer money.
This is so bad there should be a petition for this waste to be investigated in parlament
Looks like it is based on invisioncommunity. It is not even a bespoke website.
This is the state the world is at.
Scammers are winners.
Follow the money and see who bribed who to get this ;). The website is made by PWC consultant in 1/2h with chatgpt.
Damn, I'd have done it for £4.0
There is this thing that happens in USA where RFPs are issued in such a way only one vendor could pass the mark - does that happen in UK? Reckon PwC has connections to make that happen
It does to an extent but less so particularly from central government.
The tender is here [0], the approval process is usually pretty watertight. The contracts that go through this will have a paper trail. What you’ll likely find is that PWC has written a spec that meets the letter of the contract and they have delivered a site that meets the letter of their wording, which is what they’re good at. The fact that it didn’t actually solve the problem is inconsequential to PwC
[0] https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/021898-2024
[delayed]
Probably depends on the department. I do grant and loan assessments for Innovate UK, and they have a rigorous and largely (+) transparent method for assessment which I would be happy to explain in detail. If we award money, it's accompanied by a monitoring officer (I do that as well) who is subject area expert with project management business experience. The MO meets the project every one or three months to review progress and approve payment of an installation of the grant or loan. We certainly wouldn't hand over £4M without good reason!
(+ Some of the detail of the scoring matrix is not as transparent as we would like, but Innovate UK does take feedback and tries to improve it).
They could have used their AI skills to vibe code this for a few dollars. :)
This has all the hallmarks of AI slop. Upsetting :/
This effort is utterly dreadful.
I started off from the press release on GOV.UK (as linked in OP and which is a paragon of virtue in web design) and followed the "Free AI foundations training" link and it all went south rather rapidly.
Its bold, brash and horrible. It does look like a set of links and its not immediately obvious where you start or what to do with it.
There are a few things that might be hyperlinks but the large weird rounded cornered sort of press me perhaps if you dare but I'm a bit flat and might kick your dog thing that might be a control or not but I'm purple and have an arrow ... ooh go on ... click me. Clicking around that area does move on to the next step which is just as obtuse.
I do hope that clears things up!
The UK government want to write a cheque with our money for "Digital ID" whatever nebulous Tax + Services + Tracking that is... they can't even control costs on a tiny website, what is the cost of an everything site? Infinite pounds? Imagine what even a basic v1 spec for that looks like, it would probably never even be released.
A reminder the UKs Track and Trace apparently cost £29.3 billion of the £37bn allocated. Disgusting waste of money.
But at least Keir and the government will have cushy jobs to go to after they leave government.
Test, track, and trace.
https://fullfact.org/health/NHS-test-and-trace-app-37-billio...
"The NAO said that of the approximately £13.5 billion spent on the NHS Test and Trace programme in 2020/21, £35 million was spent on the app.
The vast majority of the spending in that year was accounted for by testing (£10.4 billion)."
The statistic of £29bn was taken from this article https://fullfact.org/online/37-billion-test-and-trace-app-sc...
I still think this is far higher than comparable countries and seems like a rip off. Any of the figures are extremely wasteful IMO. I wasn’t trying to suggest the app cost billions.
oh, so they got a better deal than usual...
If it does upskill 10 million people just a tiny amount, £4.1 million is incredibly cheap.
At one point in time the price of things was related mostly to their cost, not to some hand-wavy produced value.
It's not perfect, but this is the point of tender.
It helps to read the linked article before commenting.
Just because you read an article, doesn't mean you have to agree with it. (Yes, I read the entire article before I commented.)
The regime is counting on you.
“If” is absolutely staggering under the heavy lifting it’s doing there.
This will have as much effect as a gnat’s fart.
Clearly the site is intended for a few mega-employers to push out as "training". How many employees do you think need to take the training to recoup £4.1 million in GDP? Not many.