The UK Paid $5.65 Million For a Bookmarks Site

The UK government paid consulting firm PwC $5.65 million to build its new AI Skills Hub, a site meant to help 10 million workers gain AI skills by 2030 that functions largely as a bookmarking service, directing users to external training courses that already existed before the contract was awarded.

The hub links to platforms like Salesforce's free Trailhead learning system rather than offering original educational content. PwC has acknowledged the site does not fully meet accessibility standards. The platform also contains factual errors in its course on AI and intellectual property, which references "fair use" -- a legal doctrine specific to the U.S. -- rather than the UK's "fair dealing" framework.

Vibecoded with Invision?

[cristiroma]

Seem to be vibecoded with invision ...
When you register you manually enrol to the courses and they open in their own platforms (MS, Salesforce) etc. This is only a facade done in maybe a week.
That cookie banner...I don't think it does what it says it does. Regardless of what I choose it sends a beacon to https://static.cloudflareinsig... [cloudflareinsights.com], I guess UK is out of EU right?

It's the gold rush of web development - get as much as you can, while you can.

They got off cheap!

[serviscope_minor]

If it only cost 5 mil and actually works then they got off very cheap as these things go.

The trouble is that the government is obsessed with several things.

1. Fraud!

Can't have fraud so the procurement rules are deep and complex to the point where only the largest companies can hope to negotiate them. They'd rather pay 100x over the odds and a 50% failure rate due to incompetence than have a 1% chance of failure due to fraud. In fairness this is a problem with the elctorate rather than the government. But it means...

2. Giant companies only need apply

Giant companies deliver things for the government (albeit it crappily), so there fore only large companies that people have heard of can possible deliver things. So only they get to deliver things. So only they can deliver things. So only they get...

3. The government can't do anything

because only large companies can deliver things. so clearly the government can't because things are made by big companies.

The end result of 3 is that the government refuses to do anything except contract out to giant companies. Noe only is it expensive but the lack of in house skills (and seriously this is a bookmarking website) means they can't even evaluate proposals, let alone build anything. So the only option is to tender to giant companies because only those companies can build anything...

Classic British inefficiency.

Re: They got off cheap!

[liqu1d]

I fail to see how paying £5million for a site like that is anything but fraud. These websites are not complex.

Re: They got off cheap!

[serviscope_minor]

It's not fraud because PwC didn't do anything wrong per se: they quoted a silly price and the government agreed to that price. That's stupid but it's not fraud.Big companies overcharge, and the tendering rules are such that no one else can practically apply.

Re: They got off cheap!

[liqu1d]

Ok from that perspective it's not fraud my apologies. It seems an incredible waste.

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

Yeah massive colossal waste, I 100% agree.

Re:

[grahamsz]

It also means that government bureaucrats are effectively only ever negotiating with giant corporations like Oracle and PwC. While I don't buy into the notion that everyone that works in government is inept, you effectively have someone who has little experience negotiating a technical deliverable up against a corporate who has decades of experience of protecting themselves and profiting from scope creep.

Re:

[alvinrod]

The government could stay out of it entirely and not spend any of the taxpayers money on this sort of useless crap. If people feel they need to train to use AI they can decide to spend their own money (which they'll have more of because the government didn't take it from them in the first place) and companies that want to offer services that people consider worth buying.

Instead we get government paying for a crap product or more often a crap product being sold by someone they're old chums with with no re

Re:

[pjt33]

"Deliver" isn't really the right verb. "Front" is more accurate. The small handful of big companies get the contract, but then they subcontract it to one of a larger number of medium/big companies, and that company subsubcontracts it to a small company which does all the actual delivery and gets about 10% of the original fee.

The UK government paid consulting firm

[MpVpRb]

This rarely results in excellence

News @ 11, Public servant wastes millions!

[oldgraybeard]

Of other peoples money, Why? because they can. Over all, public servants are getting more incompetent and useless by the day.

Waste of money.

[nightflameauto]

I could have built them a link aggregator for $4 million!

The cure for AI skills shortages

[Mirnotoriety]

Buy one, plug in all your data then ask it questions and save on the £4.1 million ($5.65 million USD). Besides I suspect that like most businnesses the data will be hidden by senior management as power management.

Budget to fix Slashdot ?

[greytree]

One day at $100 per hour = $800

Do I get the job ?

Re:

[cristiroma]

Your Slashdot # suggests you might not master Perl do do the job

Re:

[greytree]

I got a new one, I can assure you I know Perl well.

Wait, is this the interview ?

I would have done it for £400k

[OrangeTide]

As a consultant in the past, I think I would have charged roughly 1/10th that for the work and support. Obviously I have to charge something, especially if it's a firm with more than one person involved in doing the work. But really 2-4 people working 3-9 months full time is going to be perhaps 800 GBP. And while the throughput of the project might mean it takes 9 months to deliver, we'd be working on 5 other projects at the same time. There's usually a lot of down time as you show the client things and wai