Consulting firms are a scam
UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M
51–60 of 153 posts
Re: UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M
#52At my last company (a telco that was government previously) they wound up paying $3 million for barely more than a Drupal theme for the public website.
Fun project to be on. We played “descope” bingo… but everyone won all the time.
Re: UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M
#53In 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 o…
I wish a fitting comeuppance upon all the grifters taking up a seat which could've been filled by someone actually interested in governance.
Re: UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M
#54Interestingly, 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
Re: UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M
#55Looks like it is based on invisioncommunity. It is not even a bespoke website.
Imagine charging 4 milly for what amounts to a wordpress theme + module configuration.
Re: UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M
#56This 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’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?
Re: UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M
#57Looks like it is based on invisioncommunity. It is not even a bespoke website.
Imagine charging 4 milly for what amounts to a wordpress theme + module configuration.
I get the feeling you haven’t done much government consulting. The bill has nothing to do with the actual work; it’s meetings with stakeholders after stakeholder then coming out with a plan that will please everyone.
Re: UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M
#58UK Gov has a whole set of standards for building websites, yet it seems sites like this get to opt out of this.
Re: UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M
#59We have an amazing gov.uk web team, they could have expanded that and built it in house with civil servants costing £60k ea per annum at the very most. £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?
Unfortunately because the top end of the salary is limited, to get people to work on stuff they need to bring in contractors to fill out the teams for many projects.
Re: UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M
#60There 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.
Having worked in large corporates (and some government projects) issuing out RFPs, the final decision tends to go: let's just go with an established name like PwC even if they're more expensive (and given we have the budget approved already) as opposed to a small firm down the road that has a great portfolio, because if something goes wrong, I can say I relied on this big, proven firm, and not be criticized for using…
I've seen some small firms crash and burn too, though. The problem is small firms are easy-come, easy-go; they don't have enough reputation at stake. Not sure what a good solution is.