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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

#121

Post by rcxdude »

lwhi wrote: post #112
hluska wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cyber Essentials is a lot more of a PITA than 9001, it's very prescriptive in ways that cause all kinds of headaches without helping security.

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

#122

Post by thoughtpeddler »

Anyone else surprised by how the actual training content doesn't seem to cover true fundamentals (even for a broad, non-technical audience) that would include basics like pre-training, post-training, weights, context window, etc? I get that we're all flabbergasted by the website itself, but it's not like the content is redeeming either. Here in the US, I should've learned my lesson when what came out of the White House "AI Education Summit" wasn't a comprehensive plan to teach Americans about AI, but instead just a cheap ploy for tech companies to offer coupons and vouchers to start using their services.

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

#123

Post by roryirvine »

petesergeant wrote: post #96
owisd wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's actually the role of Police and Crime Commissioner that prevents them from being an MP simultaneously. In Greater Manchester (and London) the PCC role is combined with that of Mayor, but it isn't in most other city regions.

There's not much actual difference in the mayoral aspect of the roles - Jarvis was the Mayor of the South Yorkshire Combined Authority, not simply the mayor of Sheffield City Council.

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

#124

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

woooooo wrote: post #93
nick49488171 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yup. Governments have to follow all the laws, which often companies can ignore in the interests of speed.

Also, governments are large bureaucracies, with all the process that entails. And because there's no real benefit for them in delivering quicker, but lots of risk in delivering badly, this sort of stuff happens.

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

#125

Post by azornathogron »

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…

I don't doubt you're correct about the incentives, but one point seems amiss...

> 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.

You don't think that spending £4.1 million on this garbage might reflect badly on someone?

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

#127

Post by haritha-j »

__coder__ wrote: post #99

I think most of the cost is for handling and collaborating with the government org. As an engineer who worked with Gov orgs before, I can say it is not easy; imagine how many levels of approvals were given to put that site online.

Not many by the looks of the site

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

#128

Post by roryirvine »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #114

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 g…

The full details of the tender are available from https://ukri.delta-esourcing.com/delta/respondToList.html?ac...

Not so much of the "long term vision and plan", but plenty of aligning stakeholders, as well as discovering, researching, and managing third party resources - and then there's the requirement to run the service for a further 18 months.

£4m is enough to pay for about 15 consultants for 18 months at typical rates paid by the public sector. But since this is a standalone project, call it a dozen plus overheads. That feels roughly right as a finger-in-the-air estimate for a project of that sort of scope.

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

#129

Post by henryaj »

rcxdude wrote: post #121
lwhi wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cyber Essentials is a lot more of a PITA than 9001, it's very prescriptive in ways that cause all kinds of headaches without helping security.

I absolutely hated doing Cyber Essentials (Plus). Huge waste of time

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

#130

Post by jalapenos »

It's very simple: if you're not spending your own money, so what?

All other discussion is just noise.

If you accept the idea that it's OK for the state to spend 50% of the economy, on things for you or your various self-congratulatory moral-high-horse programs, this is actually where the money will get pissed away to.

It's all carefully avoiding noticing that socialism is theft because maybe you might get a sniff of the loot.

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