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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

#61

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

michaelt wrote: post #15
dizzy9 wrote: post #9

In 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…

In unrelated news Labour quietly dropped its plans to "restructure" the audit industry last week.

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

#62

Post by b00ty4breakfast »

plagiarist wrote: post #53
michaelt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

these are exactly the kinds of people interested in governance. That's the problem

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

#64

Post by IncreasePosts »

mtoner23 wrote: post #36
eranation wrote: post #24

US: I see your £4.1M and raise you $2.1B [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HealthCare.gov#:~:text=estimat...

To be fair. Healthcare.gov is a lot more complicated. And has to integrate with marketplaces in all 50 states

Magnitude is also important. If you overpay by 100% on a stick of gum that's bad deal but I likely to have any large consequences for you. But if you overpay for your house by 100% you're probably in a world of pain

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

#65

Post by cmcaleer »

krapht wrote: post #60
ebbi wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You could have contracted 5 small firms for £400k each (which, for this project seems frankly seems excessive) and even if a couple failed to deliver you'd have gotten 3 separate products to choose the best quality one from, £148k to legally chase up the firms who failed to deliver, and still had £2 million left over.

I agree a good solution isn't easy to come up with, but the status quo is certainly an outrageously awful one.

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

#66

Post by Supermancho »

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…

My father was a ISO9000 and ISO9001 certification consultant for over 10 years. He taught at Cal Poly Pamona, near the end of that era. This was my first exposure to using the familiar terms seen in RFCs like MUST MAY SHALL, etc.

Ever tried to write a quality based document describing how to create an air filled, japanese oragami balloon? (step 3 is the first big hurdle, https://www.wikihow.com/Make-an-Origami-Balloon). That was his goto starter for ISO classes.

> 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?

ISO standards don't ensure this, since certification is only based on verifying documentation format. What the ISO processes do tend to do is create a small memo indicating that every dept should justify the work they are doing by writing it down and showing it to their boss. What that does to an organization is to produce a crapload of near-useless documentation and throw a large number of people into political hell. After that, the solution is always the same. They quickly move from everyone trying to coordinate down to a very small number of people (1-3) taking charge of moving dept to dept. Either the agents or the supervisors who are articulate enough to gloss over inconsistencies and gaps to form a coherent story, write the documentation.

While this may lend well to shoring up some companies' internals, in the early 2000s, ISO certification consultancy was a lucrative gig. It was chased as a stamp to markup pricing, rather than a quality tool.

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

#67

Post by cmcaleer »

Oras wrote: post #28

When I checked the site this morning, the first impression I had was: They could have just linked to deeplearning[.]ai and that would have been much better. and that's before knowing about the £4M

Better yet, a link to Kaggle and provide prize funding for a few dozen competitions with most of them open to UK residents only. Directly incentivise the most driven types of people to compete and learn and give local firms a way to identify talent.

But I guess donating another £4MM to PwC is more sensible.

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

#68

Post by [deleted] »

krapht wrote: post #60
ebbi wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#69

Post by deaux »

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 met similar "criteria" when selected for Horizon. How well that selection reflected on the procurement office..

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PwC#Litigation

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

#70

Post by Aeolun »

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?

If this was a good fit for SME, and the price paid for the whole thing was 4M pounds, why didn’t any SME win the tender? Seriously, that’s the whole yearly turnover for most SME shops I ever worked at. And all of them could do a better job than this.
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