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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

#111

Post by marcus_holmes »

deaux wrote: post #69
marcus_holmes wrote: post #27

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…

> 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. This is an absurd statement that might as well come straight out of Yes Minister. Buying from PWC reflects badly on them already, let alone when their next scandal happens. Which is of course never far away [0]. I'm sure Fujitsu me…

You know Yes Minister was a documentary, right? ;)

Buying from PWC reflects badly on them with us, because we know tech. It does not reflect badly with other civil servants, because PWC is a highly-respected organisation.

It's very similar to "No-one got fired for buying from IBM", which was a cliche because it was true.

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

#112

Post by lwhi »

hluska wrote: post #56
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:…

I’m reading the original tender and there is zero mention of ISO 9000. In fact, the tendering authority even specifically stated this opportunity was a good fit for SMEs. Where does all this talk of standards come from?

For government tenders, I do know that agencies need certification. Maybe not ISO2001 (which is a security standard that many corporate procurement processes require the supplier to have obtained when purchasing software), but Cyber Essentials / Cyber Essentials Plus is common.

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

#113

Post by pjmlp »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #35
marcus_holmes wrote: post #27

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:…

Just like any other kind of certifications in the same domain.

Want to use enterprise product XYZ?

Need to have at least X amount of certified employees to reach the basic layer, additional certifications for the next layers.

The kind of support tickets, documentation and trainings available depend on the certification levels, and by the way they have to be renewed every couple of years.

However it is how the ball rolls in certain industries, and rebeling against it won't win anything, better switch jobs for those anti-certifications.

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

#114

Post by StopDisinfo910 »

Easy to be angry but I won't comment until I see what exactly was delivered. These projects often have a lot of extra.

Just the development would be expensive but if they also worked on scoping and framing the platform, aligning multiple stakeholders (yes, even just linking outside courses mean you might have to interact with other parts of government or providers) and defining the long term vision and plan, it can get expensive pretty quickly.

Doing anything with the government is a pain. It's even worse than working in a large company. You get paid very late. You have annoying contractual provisions. It makes everything very expensive.

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

#115

Post by lwhi »

mellosouls wrote: post #54
jaccola wrote: post #44

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…

Tangentially, Burnham has a long history with these sorts of public-sector private vampires, having been up to his neck in PFI (of "£200 to change a lightbulb" fame) in his stint leading the NHS. eg. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jun/28/labour-debt-peter... https://doctorsforthenhs.org.uk/the-truth-about-the-lies-tha... etc

And that's just it. Vampiric.

The fact that a huge amount of money is extracted from the UK government for no (or very little value) is a crying shame.

I know multiple people who work as consultants (hired via private agencies, paid for by Government) who have literally done nothing for six months plus.

They have no incentive to whistleblow, the agency employing them has no incentive to get rid of them as they take a cut, and then government department hiring them is non-the-wiser because they have no technical knowledge or understanding of what's being carried out.

It should be the scandal of the decade.

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

#116

Post by wasmainiac »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #27

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…

> This is pretty normal for government procurement, though

Why accept the status que? How many working lives of tax revenue did this bs consume?

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

#117

Post by marcus_holmes »

hluska wrote: post #56
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:…

I’m reading the original tender and there is zero mention of ISO 9000. In fact, the tendering authority even specifically stated this opportunity was a good fit for SMEs. Where does all this talk of standards come from?

In the tender there's one line:

> IV.1.8) Information about the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) The procurement is covered by the Government Procurement Agreement: Yes

Googling the UK Government Procurement Agreement got me to:

> https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/government-standar...

which was when I realised this was a rabbit hole and while I am positive that somewhere deep in that rabbit hole would be a requirement for all procurement suppliers to meet ISO9000 or similar, I was going to have to spend hours finding it. Hours I don't have.

You can cheerfully dismiss this opinion if you like, I don't have the data to provide you evidence.

But I also think this proves my point; if you have to spend hours just finding out what the requirements are, you probably don't meet them.

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

#118

Post by marcus_holmes »

wasmainiac wrote: post #116
marcus_holmes wrote: post #27

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…

> This is pretty normal for government procurement, though Why accept the status que? How many working lives of tax revenue did this bs consume?

It's common to all large organisations. Because large organisations get like this; if everyone does their own procurement then money gets misused, wasted, and becomes uncontrolled. So they centralise procurement, and that disconnects it from the people who understand what they're buying, so they have to control it through process, and the process bloats until we get to this point.

One of the many, many, arguments for not allowing organisations to get this big.

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

#120

Post by wasmainiac »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #118
wasmainiac wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is pretty normal for government procurement, though Why accept the status que? How many working lives of tax revenue did this bs consume?

It's common to all large organisations. Because large organisations get like this; if everyone does their own procurement then money gets misused, wasted, and becomes uncontrolled. So they centralise procurement, and that disconnects it from the people who understand what they're buying, so they have to control it through process, and the process bloats until we get to this point. One of the many, many, arguments for…

> Because large organisations get like this;

Still it does not need to be this way. Large organisations used to actually get s** done generally in budget and on time. Now we can’t even do a simple tasks without mountains of paper work and cash. I know, my partner used to work in a related industry, it’s painful to hear their stories.

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