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UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M

mahadk.com

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Re: UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M

#11

Post by gerdesj »

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!

Re: UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M

#12

Post by beejiu »

madaxe_again wrote: post #10
beejiu wrote: post #8

If it does upskill 10 million people just a tiny amount, £4.1 million is incredibly cheap.

“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.

Re: UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M

#15

Post by michaelt »

dizzy9 wrote: post #9

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.

Re: UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M

#16

Post by beejiu »

samtp wrote: post #14
beejiu wrote: post #8

If it does upskill 10 million people just a tiny amount, £4.1 million is incredibly cheap.

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.)

Re: UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M

#18

Post by maccard »

edoceo wrote: post #3

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

Re: UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M

#19

Post by whenc »

andy_ppp wrote: post #7

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 Test and Trace apparently cost £29.3 billion of the £37bn allocated. D…

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)."

Re: UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M

#20

Post by tengwar2 »

edoceo wrote: post #3

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

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).

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