41–50 of 153 posts
£120k, double it for stupid amounts of testing, double it again for managers to tell the people doing the work "do the work". We're still only at £500k.
Gov.uk web team are supposed to be award winning. Why are we picking shitty slop-corps to do this work?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 di…
> The fact that it didn’t actually solve the problem is inconsequential to PwC You are mistaken. The fact it does not solve the problem is good for business , because follow up contracts to resolve any shortcomings will most likely also be awarded to PwC, since they are the only bidder to already have the in house expertise on this bespoke site...
One of the given reasons is because Burnham is currently mayor of Greater Manchester, and running a new election there would cost approx £4m(!!) which is a huge waste of taxpayer money.
I was surprised that they even gave this as a faux reason since it seems like the sort of money they would spend on replenishing the water coolers, or buying bic pens, or... building a static website!
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 slightes…
ISO9000 is, bar none, the most brilliant grift I have ever encountered. It's so simple, yet so elegant. Step 1: Come up with an incredibly easy to meet standard (because you don't want anybody abandoning the process because it's too much of a hassle) that sounds like a reasonable requirement on paper (to make it easy to pitch as a basic requirement of doing business). Say, "Have a plan for the things you do". Step 2:…
I have been an MD for 25 years. ISO 9001 reg. since 2006. Its been a bit of a pain at times but it does concentrate the mind towards doing things right. We've never used consultants, we've always just read and followed the standards.
What is your experience?
PS During our last assessment, the assessor described a few recent AI written efforts they had come across. Laughable.
PPS I've been doing this for over 25 years and I think that a quality based approach to running a company is a good idea ... you?
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.
It's frustrating, because these larger firms most always churn out subpar work and this mindset just keeps funding it so they don't improve.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-23/bureau-of-meteorology...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. Test and trace is just the name of the UK programme (as used by fullfact and the NAO) so I’m not sure why you’re attempting…
Interestingly, the UK PM (and allies) just blocked a would-be political rival Andy Burnham standing as an MP. One of the given reasons is because Burnham is currently mayor of Greater Manchester, and running a new election there would cost approx £4m(!!) which is a huge waste of taxpayer money. I was surprised that they even gave this as a faux reason since it seems like the sort of money they would spend on replenis…
Why can't he just do both jobs? Boris did it iirc.
Eh, here in Australia we spent 96 million on the front end of a weather website. Estimated at $4 million originally. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-23/bureau-of-meteorology...