UK Government spends 6.4m on a website subdomain - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: MrMobodies
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2022, 10:58:56 pm
content: I am not sure if this is dodgy or not but please move to Dodgy section if it turns out to be dodgy.Oops I accidentally posted in Dodgy section when I wanted to put it in General topic first incase the costs were not on dodgy grounds.Putting the politics aside how can a website cost 6.4 million?https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/minister-for-disabled-people-deletes-tweet-about-dwps-6-million-website/Quote£6.4 million pound website?https://www.support-with-employee-health-and-disability.dwp.gov.ukThat figure seems very high for a website if the service is just a website.The website looks to me like other government websites like Companieshouse.Its under the domain name:dwp.gov.ukIP: 151.101.2.30support-with-employee-health-and-disability.dwp.gov.ukcan't seem to ping that subdomain or get any informationWith the firewall:92.123.120.138151.101.61.91https://whois.domaintools.com/151.101.2.30Quotehttps://whois.domaintools.com/151.101.61.91Quotehttps://whois.domaintools.com/92.123.120.138Quotehttps://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/QuoteSo they used one of their templates, put the information in a tree/flow diagram in the form of a survey and used a sub domain and hosted it on infrastructure they already own or under contract.I wonder how much they paid for the covid webpage and site with the page that seems to be setup pretty quickly earliest on 28th of February 2020.https://web.archive.org/web/20200401231313/https://www.gov.uk/coronavirusMaps, earliest July 1st 2020:https://web.archive.org/web/20210701061540/coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map/caseshttps://bfpg.co.uk/2020/04/covid-19-timeline/#:~:text=February28th 2020&text=The first British victim dies,passed on inside the country.Quotecoronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map/casesdata.gov.uk151.101.52.144https://whois.domaintools.com/data.gov.ukQuotehttps://www.support-with-employee-health-and-disability.dwp.gov.uk/support-with-employee-health-and-disabilityQuoteIt sounds good to me looking through the different scenarios, whether employers take note and use it or not is another thing and the work put into it but £6.4 million for just one site, on hosting and infrastructure that they already maintain and own or leased under contract.I think no websiteis worthshould cost 6.4 million or a service like this especially given it is hosted like the same as the others that they host.I don't ever remember them mentioning the costs of the other government websites or hosts like this one out of the many I have seen. I think I did hear something about a NHS Covid app thing and just found something:https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/127/public-accounts-committee/news/150988/unimaginable-cost-of-test-trace-failed-to-deliver-central-promise-of-averting-another-lockdown/QuoteCompared to that this one looks to me like a simple series of flow diagram quiz like things spread across a few webpages under a sub domain.What do you think?Edit: Changed title as it is under a subdomain.

author: AndyBeez
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2022, 11:24:30 pm
content: DWP Digital are just a small slice of the UKs Department of Work and Pension cheesecake. Your domain details are likely the CDN pathways. Yes, I would expect DWP traffic to be served from farms in London, Manchester, Newcastle or Cardiff, but public sector contracts are thrown like confetti at which ever US corporation can 'influence' the present minister for work and pensions the most. So if Akamai are routing traffic via NYC or Chicago, that's just how the UK government's 'ITIL vision' works.

author: Wilksey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2022, 11:43:19 pm
content: They should have said I'd have done it for £6.2m.

author: MrMobodies
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2022, 12:09:07 am
content: I remember something about an article and just found it:https://www.marketing-beat.co.uk/2022/10/10/government-pulls-campaign/QuoteSounds to me like certain people in the UK Government trying to find ways of charging or overcharging the taxpayer for advice or things that people may already be forced to do especially when they are on a prepaid meter.I wonder, do they need to even mention they are spending x amount on a website or more like a trivial set of pages under a sub domain when they have many like it.

author: AVGresponding
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2022, 08:54:36 am
content: UK governments have a history of wasting sometimes vast amounts of money on IT projects, so this is just business as usual as far as I'm concerned.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2022, 08:19:38 pm
content: You may have no idea of how much governments spend on websites, databases and even "marketing" (uh, "communication", right?). Big tech companies/agencies are really milking the cow here. No surprise. If anything, consider that amount to be pretty tiny compared to what they have spent on much less useful stuff.And, if people really realized how their governments spent their tax money, they would stop paying taxes immediately.

author: AndyBeez
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2022, 10:04:49 pm
content: Quote from: AVGresponding on October 30, 2022, 08:54:36 amQuote

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2022, 10:05:57 pm
content: Peanuts. The Apotti patient data system for 1.7M Finnish citizens in and around the metropolitan Helsinki area currently has a price tag of 800M€, and rising. And it is utter shit to use, too.

author: unknownparticle
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 03, 2022, 03:35:27 pm
content: Sounds like the debacle that the NHS caused with it's new computer system some years ago. I don't recall all the details but it was cocked up badly and there was a major problem that meant it could never work as intended. They couldn't cancel the contract though so the whole system was delivered and just put into storage, never used, not even unpacked!! And we are talking about truck loads of gear. Don't know what happened to it, as it was rapidly swept under that big carpet the government keeps for such events!