

How can a website cost £35 million? You’d better ask the government - swombat
http://matthewparsons.net/2010/07/05/how-can-a-website-cost-35-million-youd-better-ask-the-government/

======
neilk
Amateurs. Canada set up a national gun registry database for a mere $710
million US. That's just the cost of the computer system.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Firearms_Registry#Cost...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Firearms_Registry#Cost_overruns)

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2004/02/13/gunregistry_rdi04021...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2004/02/13/gunregistry_rdi040213.html)

This is one of the few times I agree 100% with conservatives. The very concept
of the database is dubious, and the implementation is almost a paradigmatic
example of waste. It amazes me that this is not a bigger scandal than it is in
Canada.

~~~
dublinclontarf
Pffffft. I can beat that.

PPARS, the "new" payment system for Irelands national health service (new in
2005, the health service is called the HSE).

With a set budget of €9m,the total cost was €220m in 2009, and the system
isn't even bloody working.

Remember this is not Canada, it's Ireland, with only 4m people and a much
smaller income.

The problem is that this isn't an exception, in Ireland it's the rule.

More info here:[http://www.independent.ie/national-news/ppars-fiasco-as-
cost...](http://www.independent.ie/national-news/ppars-fiasco-as-costs-
hit-8364220m-1891230.html)

------
arethuza
How can an ugly building in Edinburgh cost £414 million?

A combination of incompetence, greed and a general air of "it doesn't matter
as it's only taxpayers money".

Have a read of this:

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Plundering-Public-Sector-David-
Craig...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Plundering-Public-Sector-David-
Craig/dp/1845293746)

~~~
gaius
I'd like to see our new overlords impose a windfall tax on Accenture, EDS, IBM
and all the rest. Start by clawing back the £20Bn the useless, unwanted NHS IT
system cost.

Tho' to be fair, sacking civil servants (with no pension) when the projects
they oversee overrun by an order of magnitude would go a long way to restoring
some semblance of order. Remember that the British civil service once
administered the Empire - most of the known world - with a fraction of its
present staff and no IT at all...

~~~
sprout
Of couurse they had IT. IT in those days was the army of shipwrights,
engineers and sailors that kept messages flowing from port to port and city to
city.

And there were a lot of fat cat bureaucrats living off government largesse.

And I have a lot more respect for their modern counterparts than those ancient
oppressors. (Not to say we moderns are blameless in any way.)

~~~
arethuza
A lot of the Empire was created directly by commercial concerns (e.g. East
India Company) and only taken over and managed directly by the state when
things got out of hand (India's First War of Independence/Great Rebellion).

------
Robin_Message
£35 million to provide a great deal of useful information on starting and
running a business, and how to navigate the required government bureaucracy?
Well, it's not cheap, but things that are worth having rarely are.

Of course, we could make things simpler so such an explanation is not required
and everyone could just read the statutes, but _given the world we live in_ ,
it's not so expensive for the useful information it contains. If I drill-down
randomly, I get to "Taxes, returns & payroll > PAYE for employers > PAYE if
your business closes or changes > If you no longer employ anyone and don't
plan to do so again." That's pretty specific and useful. There are 10-20
categories per level, and 4 levels, and >100 words per article, giving a total
of at least one million words of well categorised, useful business advice and
information.

£35 a word all-in? Sure, it _sounds_ pricey. Poor value for money? Then you
have to make an argument that the website doesn't provide that much value.

------
_delirium
I've heard of things not too far from this in Big Non-Techie Corporate America
as well, and universities also (both public and private). Seems to be some
function of large-budget organizations buying things they don't understand.
There are entire consulting companies that seem to specialize in building
these super-expensive Enterprise Portals for large organizations. (I have no
idea how you break into that business.)

------
omd
Doing a quick search shows the website is more than just a custom cms as the
article suggests. Several other .gov.uk refer to the website with "[...]is now
available at www.businesslink.gov.uk" so there must have been a huge
conversion leading up to the launch. Also this quote:

It has three main types of information:

    
    
        * text content explaining regulations and other areas of business [...]
    
        * directory content 
    
        * interactive tools
    

See also <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Link>

£35m is still a lot for a portal but I wouldn't call it "a website".

~~~
nailer
* The Wikipedia page is already flagged for sounding like an ad.

* The same article refers to the site as a website anyway

* Most of the features are 'information on...'

~~~
ErrantX
I did a bit of cleaning up of the Wikipedia page :) r.e. the quoted text, it
actually seems a reasonable description of the site (from a quick look).

------
Nekojoe
According to this [1] it costs £2.15 a hit. Which isn't that bad spending wise
if you consider the worst website in the UK government cost £11.78 per visit.

[1] <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/25/gov_websites/>

~~~
CWuestefeld
Careful with the apples and oranges. Counting visits and hits are very
different things.

------
ojbyrne
Last I looked, facebook (a website) has raised $836 million, twitter (a
website) $160 million.

------
motters
Heh, welcome to the world of government spending. What you can see on this
list is really just corruption as usual - i.e. quangos assigning large amounts
of public money to their friends and relations. In return certain recipient
organisations or companies may or may not make donations to certain political
parties, who in turn may or may not be able to pay increased salaries to high
ranking party members and spend more money on campaigning.

------
hussong
I'm wondering how useful Business Link is for startups. Any UK founders care
to share?

~~~
sharpn
Not very, in my experience. Although they were very helpful on exporting
goods, every other question I had was either answered incorrectly (!) or met
with 'we can't give legal/accounting advice' - which is understandable but I
did tell them my questions beforehand so they could have avoided a wasted
meeting.

They then tried to persuade me to use a particular SEO company - so I left.

------
GiraffeNecktie
I'm currently observing a government department that is in the process of
attempting to put a little web portal on their mainframe, an approach that's
adding seven figures (at least) to the bill. That's the way they do things in
the government. Choose the most cumbersome, inefficient, insecure and
technologically arcane approach and run with it.

------
oscardelben
Italia.it costed 45,000,000 of euros and was developed by IBM. The project was
also a big failure.

------
known
Welcome to _electronic_ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_tape>

~~~
arethuza
My spouse used to work as a lawyer in the Civil Service - I was highly amused
to discover that when she brought work home it was carefully tied up in yards
of real red tape.

------
varjag
I don't know how they end up with this price tag, but I have an idea where
they could shave off a bit for the next austerity bill..

