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"I took a closer look at the UK government's new 'AI Skills Hub', and it is insane. It includes 'courses' that are simply links to info pages about PhD programs; 'courses' that are literally just software developer documentation; and 'courses' that don't exist at all."

https://x.com/ednewtonrex/status/2016881752690618735?s=20

The government have been totally had.

Jeez.

That's not a Skills Hub for AI. That's a Skills Hub made by AI.

Who did this and how much did they charge?

Its been reported at "only" £4 million. I I was a journalist I might do so digging to see if that was the extent of it and who actually did the work and who signed it off.

Capita (or similar) will have got the main contract for it. They will then have sub-contracted to Cognizant (or similar) to do the main bit of the work. But they will likely have also sub-contracted to a number of smaller consultancy firms you've never heard of to get the people to do the work. A lot of people will have sat around getting paid while they waited for various stages of onboarding to happen, before being able to do any work, and the work done will have concentrated on building the framework for the website, but not the content - the idea being to deliver something to the department that the department could keep updated, because something like this is always going to need to be updated.

However, the department likely won't have thought about who was going to populate it and maintain it on an ongoing basis - that's opex and not capex - and the department likely doesn't have the knowledge to update a Skills Hub for AI anyway. So when they had the site delivered to them, populated by a bunch of placeholder "courses" to show that the site worked, I guess they simply published it, because who was going to have the domain knowledge to put useful stuff into it?

The minister asked for a Skills Hub for AI, and the department delivered a Skills Hub for AI, but the civil service is such a diminished organisation - not allowed to pay the salaries to employ people who know what they're doing, demoralised from the abuse they receive from every quarter, encouraged to outsource at every turn, rather than build institutional knowledge and capability - that what was delivered was a potemkin skills hub for AI, and I guess that this will kick off another round of abuse towards the civil service, reducing the prospect of a similar outcome being avoided in the future.

"I took a closer look at the UK government's new 'AI Skills Hub', and it is insane. It includes 'courses' that are simply links to info pages about PhD programs; 'courses' that are literally just software developer documentation; and 'courses' that don't exist at all."

https://x.com/ednewtonrex/status/2016881752690618735?s=20

The government have been totally had.

Jeez.

That's not a Skills Hub for AI. That's a Skills Hub made by AI.

Who did this and how much did they charge?

Its been reported at "only" £4 million. I I was a journalist I might do so digging to see if that was the extent of it and who actually did the work and who signed it off.

Capita (or similar) will have got the main contract for it. They will then have sub-contracted to Cognizant (or similar) to do the main bit of the work. But they will likely have also sub-contracted to a number of smaller consultancy firms you've never heard of to get the people to do the work. A lot of people will have sat around getting paid while they waited for various stages of onboarding to happen, before being able to do any work, and the work done will have concentrated on building the framework for the website, but not the content - the idea being to deliver something to the department that the department could keep updated, because something like this is always going to need to be updated.

However, the department likely won't have thought about who was going to populate it and maintain it on an ongoing basis - that's opex and not capex - and the department likely doesn't have the knowledge to update a Skills Hub for AI anyway. So when they had the site delivered to them, populated by a bunch of placeholder "courses" to show that the site worked, I guess they simply published it, because who was going to have the domain knowledge to put useful stuff into it?

The minister asked for a Skills Hub for AI, and the department delivered a Skills Hub for AI, but the civil service is such a diminished organisation - not allowed to pay the salaries to employ people who know what they're doing, demoralised from the abuse they receive from every quarter, encouraged to outsource at every turn, rather than build institutional knowledge and capability - that what was delivered was a potemkin skills hub for AI, and I guess that this will kick off another round of abuse towards the civil service, reducing the prospect of a similar outcome being avoided in the future.

Bottom of the page:
This is a third party site, delivered by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) on behalf of the Innovate UK BridgeAI programme.

You could be right that the delivery was just a framework, but surely someone along the way must have proposed actual material for this, otherwise what's the point?

If you need a government Skills Hub to find AI courses then you shouldn't be looking to work in AI is my brutal view of all this.

No doubt.

Though I could see some value in explaining what AI does, what it should be used for, and what it shouldn't be used for.

Perhaps the people who most need this are based in Westminster.

Honestly it sounds like The Thick of It.

"We need an AI policy for this press release."

"How about a skills hub. You can't go wrong with a skills hub. We set up loads at my last department when had no other ideas."

"Yeh, brilliant. We can also throw in a Pathfinder Initiative for good measure."

So it seems that Alex Pretti was something of a violent street thug.

In fact his behaviour was rather reminiscent of the Wath rioters.

Now that doesn't mean he should have been killed but the USA is a gun society and thankfully Yorkshire isn't.

"Now that doesn't mean he should have been killed but.."

Why do the media have to pretend that every victim was an angel though? I am sure it turns more people towards the far right than telling the truth would. If the consensus had been that this guy was a provocative and aggressive armed protestor, but that is no reason for him to be shot dead once he had been disarmed, I can't see many people disagreeing, yet making him out to be a Kumbayah singing Greenham Common style peacenik only for the footage to be revealed is akin to the highbrow disinformation problem discussed in this article, linked by our old fav @AlastairMeeks

Very very good and carefully written piece that I encourage people to read closely rather than immediately seizing on things they don’t like to score points.

https://bsky.app/profile/benansell.bsky.social/post/3md5x7v77rc24

Otoh when people are victims of an atrocity it's not a natural instinct to go looking for ways in which they hadn't lived an admirable life. Doing this usually indicates a desire to downplay the atrocity (because of support for the political cause responsible for it) by introducing the thought that it wasn't entirely unjustified.

The narrative suggests that if someone spits at a cop car and kicks out a tail light they are added to a kill list and publicly executed, mafia style, eleven days later. No trial, no misdemeanor conviction, just the execution.

'Reform UK has threatened to sue Kemi Badenoch unless she publicly apologises to Suella Braverman by 4pm tomorrow over the Tories’ now-retracted mental health reference'


https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/2016911722250911823?s=20

Silly. It was clearly just a clumsy attempt at satire. And, anyway, this is the outfit whose followers tirelessly throw around insults like 'Trump derangement syndrome' and 'Brexit derangement syndrome' thus proclaiming that anyone who questions their world view is mentally unstable. Nigel needs to lighten up.

The combination of being rude yet thin skinned is not a good one for the snowflakes of Reform.

I thought they regard hurty words as a bit of banter.

I can easily see a situation where the SNP and Greens fall slightly short of a majority but the Unionists cannot form a government because at least some parties will not work with Reform making a Unionist majority impossible too.

Lord knows what happens then but it is unlikely to be any less of a shambles that the current government who live in stasis. In 2025 the Scottish Parliament managed to pass a grand total of 15 Acts of Parliament including such radical provisions as the Welfare of Dogs Act and the Scottish Languages Act, the former allowing a code of conduct for the acquisition of dogs and the latter support for Gaelic which already exists. Who could doubt this institution takes seriously the problems of Scotland? Well, anyone who looks even briefly into what they actually do, really.

Edit, for those who want the whole exciting list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acts_of_the_Scottish_Parliament_from_2025

Sounds like a dress rehearsal for Westminster '29

"I took a closer look at the UK government's new 'AI Skills Hub', and it is insane. It includes 'courses' that are simply links to info pages about PhD programs; 'courses' that are literally just software developer documentation; and 'courses' that don't exist at all."

https://x.com/ednewtonrex/status/2016881752690618735?s=20

The government have been totally had.

Jeez.

That's not a Skills Hub for AI. That's a Skills Hub made by AI.

Who did this and how much did they charge?

Its been reported at "only" £4 million. I I was a journalist I might do so digging to see if that was the extent of it and who actually did the work and who signed it off.

Capita (or similar) will have got the main contract for it. They will then have sub-contracted to Cognizant (or similar) to do the main bit of the work. But they will likely have also sub-contracted to a number of smaller consultancy firms you've never heard of to get the people to do the work. A lot of people will have sat around getting paid while they waited for various stages of onboarding to happen, before being able to do any work, and the work done will have concentrated on building the framework for the website, but not the content - the idea being to deliver something to the department that the department could keep updated, because something like this is always going to need to be updated.

However, the department likely won't have thought about who was going to populate it and maintain it on an ongoing basis - that's opex and not capex - and the department likely doesn't have the knowledge to update a Skills Hub for AI anyway. So when they had the site delivered to them, populated by a bunch of placeholder "courses" to show that the site worked, I guess they simply published it, because who was going to have the domain knowledge to put useful stuff into it?

The minister asked for a Skills Hub for AI, and the department delivered a Skills Hub for AI, but the civil service is such a diminished organisation - not allowed to pay the salaries to employ people who know what they're doing, demoralised from the abuse they receive from every quarter, encouraged to outsource at every turn, rather than build institutional knowledge and capability - that what was delivered was a potemkin skills hub for AI, and I guess that this will kick off another round of abuse towards the civil service, reducing the prospect of a similar outcome being avoided in the future.

Bottom of the page:
This is a third party site, delivered by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) on behalf of the Innovate UK BridgeAI programme.

You could be right that the delivery was just a framework, but surely someone along the way must have proposed actual material for this, otherwise what's the point?

If you need a government Skills Hub to find AI courses then you shouldn't be looking to work in AI is my brutal view of all this.

No doubt.

Though I could see some value in explaining what AI does, what it should be used for, and what it shouldn't be used for.

Perhaps the people who most need this are based in Westminster.