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

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Perceived Waste and Corruption

  • Many see the £4.1M spend as blatant grift: “WordPress theme + config” / “AI slop” for super‑premium pricing, with jokes about kickbacks and new Bentleys.
  • Several argue large consultancies benefit from not solving the problem, as that justifies follow‑on contracts.
  • Some connect this to long‑running patterns of donor influence, secondments from big firms to political parties, and quietly dropped plans to reform the audit/consulting industry.

Government Procurement Dynamics

  • Multiple commenters say this is “normal” for large organisations: heavy risk‑aversion, complex rules, certifications (ISO 9001, ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials), and fear of blame push buyers to big, “safe” brands.
  • Process overhead (bidding, compliance, stakeholder management, slow payments) makes work with government inherently expensive and hostile to startups/SMEs.
  • Others counter that the “procurement wall” and reliance on brand names are policy choices, not inevitabilities, and enable huge waste.

What Was Actually Bought

  • Some note the tender covers more than a static site: discovery, scoping, stakeholder alignment, integrating third‑party courses, and 18+ months of running the service. A rough back‑of‑envelope: ~a dozen consultants for 18 months.
  • Others maintain that even with this scope, £4.1M is wildly out of line with what competent smaller teams could deliver.

Site Quality, UX, and Content

  • UX is widely criticised as brash, confusing, and non‑GOV.UK‑like; users report struggling to know where to start.
  • There is some praise for the breadth of courses once logged in; one commenter calls several “really good.”
  • However, others say the AI material lacks real fundamentals and leans heavily on external corporate training (e.g., Salesforce Trailhead), feeling like vendor marketing.

Big Consultancies vs SMEs / In‑House

  • Many argue this should have been built by the existing award‑winning GOV.UK/web teams or UK SMEs, with estimates that even generous in‑house staffing would land well under £1M.
  • Some stress that big‑firm engineers are often mediocre, with poor outcomes being the real scandal, more than the raw spend.

Comparisons and Systemic Critiques

  • Parallels drawn to other “boondoggles”: UK Test & Trace billions, US Healthcare.gov, Australian weather site costs.
  • Some see this as a symptom of a broader “vampiric” public‑sector outsourcing model and of a state spending huge shares of GDP with weak accountability.
  • Suggested remedies range from more open‑source government code and SME‑friendly tenders to aggressive audits, parliamentary scrutiny, and—on the extreme end—punitive legal responses for waste and fraud.