Insane government £wastage

ruggedtoast

I will let you into a little inside information about building a website for the government.

A few years ago I was taken on as a temp in a (now defunct) government department. I was told I was going to be working as a project assistant on a website they were developing. I was pretty excited about it as I had just done a Dreamweaver course.

The website in question seemed simple enough. It was basically just a database to be used between the department and its "customers", to request and exchange information. For example person A could log in, update information, and then log out again. Person B would then get an email saying this had happened and there were fields they had to update, log in themselves, see what had been marked as pending and update accordingly.

The only really technically challenging bit was that two people shouldnt be able to log in at once on one account.

The IT department had originally been asked to do this and had said they could, but then given up as it was too complicated. They said we'd need to get contractors to do it and it would cost £50,000.

At the point I started the contractors were about 2/3 of the way through and the website was a year over due and had run up a bill of, wait for it. Nine hundred thousand pounds.

I was absolutely baffled as the contractor would turn up for a 10 minute meeting (for which he would claim £500 as a site visit) only to sit there and to say that something relatively simple, that I had learnt to do on my Dreamweaver course, was next to impossible and he could give no ETA for it to be finished.

More baffling still was my bossses reaction, and his boss. They were quite relaxed about the fact there was no maximum budget for this project, and no completion date. Moreover they seemed very unwilling to listen to my complaints that the contractor was messing us around and wasting thousands of pounds.

Then it started to get near Christmas. Suddenly my boss,a poorly paid middle manager with several children and a wife who didnt work started spashing out. He took us to the pub, he took us out to dinner, he took us to bars. He suddenly seemed to have an awful lot of money in his pockets and it was all in cash. He paid a lot of attention to the pretty female members of the team with this.

Eventually the website was "finished" and we rolled it out by travelling around the country booking out posh places so we could feed and water and butter up people who had no choice whatever in using this website and could easily have been told about it an email (it really was quite a simple website).

I wasnt complaining though, I was temping, badly needed the money and the department were paying me time and a half from the moment I set out of my front door until the moment I came back x number of days later.

After the final one we had a "wrap party", the contractor turned up, drank a glass of champagne, and with the biggest grin I have ever seen wandered off.

"He looks very cheery" I said morosely to the man next to me, wondering what my own future would be now the site was finished.

"I'm not surprised" Said my erstwhile colleague. "He just got paid £500 for drinking that champagne"

"You are f|cking joking?" I asked. "You mean hes claiming for that?"

"Yep"

I left after that as I'd got a proper job but I heard sometime later that the website mysteriously was decided not to have worked and had been torn down and started again from the ground up. My manager received a large promotion. The last I heard it had got to around £3,000,000 in budgetary spend.

In the end I think the people involved were found out, it was so blatant they couldnt help but be, and were booted out in an unforeseen bout of austerity. They certainly made hay when the sun shone though, and I'm pretty sure they got a good payout and references on top of it.

lewisa

Sir_Humphrey wrote: »

I don't think you actually know what Business Link is.

No I dont Sir Humphry, is it part of a chain that people in business use? Perhaps to lock their bike to a lamp post?

You need help.

Feel free to check company , thats the business i started with less than £10K of savings. Feel free to post your business credentials nutwad.

Judging by your posts in this thread your only experience of 'business' must be as a government lacky spending other peoples money on stupid projects.

phil_b_2

That's a sickening story RG, though just confirms what I've guessed anyway. I myself have seen examples of this kind of stuff and it's pretty demoralising. Hopefully it's been killed off a bit now though...

People have to work solid for 8 hours a day to earn minimum wage, and then some can click a few buttons for 10 mins, say they have done X, Y and Z, not be questioned, and pocket a days pay. Easy.

ILW

From my experience of the last time I had contact with business link, it was offices in most towns, staffed and run by low to middle grade civil servants who new absolutely nothing about running a business, who would advise real business people how they should be doing it. Maybe this is a different thing to what you are talking about though.

ILW

phil_b wrote: »

That's a sickening story RG, though just confirms what I've guessed anyway. I myself have seen examples of this kind of stuff and it's pretty demoralising. Hopefully it's been killed off a bit now though...

People have to work solid for 8 hours a day to earn minimum wage, and then some can click a few buttons for 10 mins, say they have done X, Y and Z, not be questioned, and pocket a days pay. Easy.

You cannot blame the ones that take the money. The fault is with the ones handing it out.

lewisa

ILW wrote: »

From my experience of the last time I had contact with business link, it was offices in most towns, staffed and run by low to middle grade civil servants who new absolutely nothing about running a business, who would advise real business people how they should be doing it. Maybe this is a different thing to what you are talking about though.

Thats about the size of it

But if you have the limitless pot of stupid government spending behind you, you can avoid Business Link and take advise from Sir Humphry.

phil_b_2

ILW wrote: »

You cannot blame the ones that take the money. The fault is with the ones handing it out.

Definately! I'm sure most if not all would take it if offered. Some have bigger consciences and may not, but most.

I think the ones handing it out are the same. They dont get scrutinised either and take big cuts themselves, then probably the ones handing to them too. It's a big chain. that's the problem with the public sector, the money isnt coming out of a private individuals bank/wallet so no one cares.

Contractors absolutely love (or used to love) working for public sector clients, they know they can milk them very easily without having to do very much.

nearlynew

These practices you describe, while shocking, pale into insignificance when compared to the 100s of billions 5punked up the wall by the governmet in bailing out the banks just to keep house prices high.

This, along with the misallocation of capital wasted on fuelling HPI, has had far more damaging and long lasting consequences - both economic and social.

Sir_Humphrey

In ye olde days, the public sector would have done that sort of technical thing in-house.

phil_b_2

nearlynew wrote: »

These practices you describe, while shocking, pale into insignificance when compared to the 100s of billions 5punked up the wall by the governmet in bailing out the banks just to keep house prices high.

This, along with the misallocation of capital wasted on fuelling HPI, has had far more damaging and long lasting consequences - both economic and social.

True, but this just highlights the fact that it is all around us in all areas, even when it comes to building relatively simple websites. Scam'tastic.
the public sector gravytrain knows no bounds.