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

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

#91

Post by cs02rm0 »

"...while £4 million is admittedly chump change for the UK government..."

I know this is just the author deflecting the clichéd argument, but I hate that argument. The pennies do matter, otherwise the argument is made ad infinitum and you end up with a financially inept government running up a £200bn deficit.

These small websites should never be awarded to the mega-consultancies. Even if you paid the full £4m to a small webdev shop who'd feel like they'd hit the lottery I bet we'd get a better result and do more for the economy.

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

#92

Post by owisd »

hkt wrote: post #80
FridayoLeary wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being cynical i would say it's because Burnham could potentially challenge Starmer. Less cynically Labour has a big enough majority they can afford to lose this by election. The headache of replacing the mayor of Manchester is not worth it. Why can't he just do both jobs? Boris did it iirc.

If memory serves, Dan Jarvis also did it, being both MP and mayor of the South Yorkshire city region or whatever it was called at the time. It is fairly innately political. No Prime Minister has ever polled as low as Starmer and come back from it, or so is being said in the press. Burnham might be a smart electoral move, but he's not a plaything of the Labour right, so they kept him out.

The rules are inconsistent. You can be Mayor of Sheffield and an MP at the same time but you can’t be Mayor of Greater Manchester and an MP.

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

#93

Post by woooooo »

nick49488171 wrote: post #82
woooooo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're being a little unfair to the civil servant who has to follow the law regarding procurement. I once knew someone who had to solicit 3 bids and document them to buy a $500 camera for local government. They weren't thinking "I am useless and craven", they were thinking "this is silly but I have to do it".

Screenshot of the top 3 results on Google shopping ought to do it

This was early-00s so it was slightly more trouble than that but still not the end of the world.

The point is, the person wasn't trying to hedge against looking bad, they literally had to do and document this.

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

#94

Post by napaparts »

gerdesj wrote: post #45
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

Please show me on the doll where ISO 9000 hurt you! 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. L…

I think "concentrates the mind towards doing things right" is an accurate statement. On the other hand the parent is also correct that it is almost impossible to fail and the requirements are too broad to actually have much effect. The most helpful thing is you get the knowledge and experience of an auditor for a day. Other benefits are having someone make you write your processes down and making it easier to replace people, making sure there is a chart documenting the relationships between the people and to have some language about dealing with customer complaints and defective produce.

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

#96

Post by petesergeant »

owisd wrote: post #92
hkt wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If memory serves, Dan Jarvis also did it, being both MP and mayor of the South Yorkshire city region or whatever it was called at the time. It is fairly innately political. No Prime Minister has ever polled as low as Starmer and come back from it, or so is being said in the press. Burnham might be a smart electoral move, but he's not a plaything of the Labour right, so they kept him out.

The rules are inconsistent. You can be Mayor of Sheffield and an MP at the same time but you can’t be Mayor of Greater Manchester and an MP.

That's not inconsistency in the rules, that's inconsistency in what being the mayor means. In Sheffield it means you show up wearing funny clothes every so often, in Greater Manchester it means you have a full-time job, a large budget, and actual responsibilities.

For our American brethren, it's like the difference between being the Mayor of NYC vs the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade King.

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

#98

Post by SomeUserName432 »

Foobar8568 wrote: post #87
woooooo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're being a little unfair to the civil servant who has to follow the law regarding procurement. I once knew someone who had to solicit 3 bids and document them to buy a $500 camera for local government. They weren't thinking "I am useless and craven", they were thinking "this is silly but I have to do it".

For a government contract we budgeted somewhere between 50k and 100k to change a deployment script. I was against it, but "you know, if they don't do it, they no longer give a warranty on the solution", type of bullshit. Yeah 60md of warranty? My client are a bunch of fools. Like ONG, bribes and extracting public money is the first target.

With all the hassle a government contract can bring, it's just not worth it for anything lower.

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

#100

Post by zkmon »

Just the standard procurement. It's all about risk calculation. Award the contract to a branded company, because they tell you that no one got fired for buying IBM. From PwC side, "we already got the work, now just do the minimal thing to finish off the ceremony. Keep it crap and keep the work coming". Work comes back to you not because you have been delivering great products, but because they got locked into brand names and the mess that was created.
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