Consultants bag £375m for their role in developing the UK's faltering COVID-19 Test and Trace system
- Reference: 1609939092
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/01/06/uk_test_and_trace_consultants/
- Source link:
In a [1]Parliamentary written answer earlier this week , Helen Whately, Minister of State for Social Care at the Department of Health and Social Care, said that, as of November 2020, the Test and Trace programme designed to combat the deadly disease outbreak had hired more than 2,300 consultants and contractors working for 73 different suppliers at a total cost of approximately £375m. Big hat-tip goes to Sam Bright of [2]Byline Times for first reporting the information.
Reg readers might well note that figure equates to an average of £163k per consultant. Given a few of them may well have been employed for brief periods, earning well less than the average, it might be safe to assume a few are on their way to a cool half-million.
All this may have seemed perfectly reasonable to Conservative MP Whately as she revealed the revelation because she did, after all, prepare for the role of serving the good people of Faversham and Mid Kent with a career as a *checks notes* [3]management consultant , including tenures at PriceWaterhouseCoopers and McKinsey & Company.
The mammoth investment in management consultancy fees under the stewardship of Dido Harding, the Conservative peer who heads up England's contact-tracing system, is already bearing fruit though.
The programme in England was outsourced to Serco for £45m in June last year. The outsourcer is not responsible for the design or overall management of NHS Test and Trace, nor its IT systems. Nonetheless, the [4]outsourcer managed to leak the email addresses of around 300 human contact tracers , the people paid to find out who an infected person was in touch with, back in May.
Other problems include a shortage of tests, leading to the public being asked to [5]drive hundreds of miles to get one .
Known in these pages as [6]the Queen of Carnage for her role as chief exec of ISP TalkTalk during which a hack divulged nearly 157,000 users' financial details at a cost it £42m, Harding was named head of Test and Trace in May 2020.
Her success was such that she was [7]appointed leader of newly formed public health body, the National Institute for Health Protection, a role for which she has few qualifications. Just like a worrying proportion of our schoolchildren – unless the government gets to grips with the UK's spiralling COVID-19 outbreak and gets them back in school. ®
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[1] https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2020-10-14/103454
[2] https://bylinetimes.com/2021/01/05/government-total-number-private-sector-test-and-trace-consultants/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Whately
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/05/excel_england_coronavirus_contact_error/
[5] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53990068
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2017/02/01/dido_of_carnage_steps_down_from_talktalk/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/18/dido_harding_health_protection_institute/
[8] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: The Queen of Carnage
If you don't get a Covid contract you could always try a HMRC one. Apparently [1]CHIEF has just died today for imports and exports .
[1] https://twitter.com/pipersaturday/status/1346787129565851649
Re: The Queen of Carnage
> If you don't get a Covid contract you could always try a HMRC one. Apparently CHIEF has just died today for imports and exports.
And the link you post as 'evidence' of CHIEF being down is a tweet from a woman who openly describes herself as an astrologer and even hedges her own tweet by saying " Apparently CHIEF isn't working..." ?
Could you not find something more, erm... official?
Re: The Queen of Carnage
It wont get me off my fecking self assessment - but I will complete it a week early this year in case that craps itsself too......
Re: The Queen of Carnage
> I'm ready and available to make a complete and utter shambles of any large contract the Government might award me.
But do you have the connections required? The difficulty is to be chosen, and only those having the right connections are eligible. (Which is why you often see the same names over and over again.)
Network and connections, that's what makes the world go round.
Bah, scumbugs
As UK school closures force working parents to juggle unfathomable phonics charts with their day jobs, it's time to turn our attention to those who accrue massive financial gain from the pandemic: consultants.
Actually, there are a fair few war-profiteers in this 'war' against Covid. I'll mention a couple, first I have to get this off my chest. Gavin Williamson has the voice and intellect of a three year old girl torturing her goldfish. You are not mature enough to care for a dog, Gavin, have a spider. You are not safe with the MoD, here, have Education.
Schools in Scotland have been paying £995 for a monthly 'treatment/ deep-cleansing' "electrostatically cleaned" that is utter theatrical hygienics. It's an airborne disease, you don't catch it from surfaces. Open the windows.
My cousin who works for NHS Fife complained that their doctors are getting paid a small bonus for each vaccination. Which is nice, except it's the nurses not the doctors giving the vaccine and they don't get paid squat.
Re: Bah, scumbugs
>My cousin who works for NHS Fife complained that their doctors are getting paid a small bonus for each vaccination. Which is nice, except it's the nurses not the doctors giving the vaccine and they don't get paid squat.
GPs get paid per-procedure for all procedures they carry out - that's how the system works. The £10-per-jab bonus for jabs done before the end of the month is to ensure GPs have enough incentive to change their operations to ensure they can meet the demand we're about to put on them. For example this might include hiring an additional practice nurse to perform vaccinations. It isn't going straight into their pockets.
Re: Bah, scumbugs
I happily accept your point. The point I was trying to make was nurses should be getting a 'war-time' bonus.
British soldiers sent into war get a £28 a day bonus because they are risking their lives - nurses should be getting the same.
Re: Bah, scumbugs
nurses should be getting the same.
Why? Their job is looking after the sick, for which they get paid. Maybe not enough, which is a separate issue, but there's no reason that they should get a bonus for doing the job they were hired for. Overtime, perhaps, if they're working more hours than usual.
Re: Bah, scumbugs
Well similarly soldiers are hired to fight, so why pay them a bonus when they are putting their lives at risk?
The logic is clear, to me at least. Same rules apply. The morality and pragmatism should be clearer still - who is going to care for you when nurses are off sick or deceased? Maybe try clapping for a nurse?
There are billions being paid to friends of Tories for dubious contracts as highlighted here, that should be going to the frontline.
Re: Bah, scumbugs
Well similarly soldiers are hired to fight, so why pay them a bonus when they are putting their lives at risk?
True enough. Recruiting posters notwithstanding, anyone who joins the army to "see the world" is a fool, soldiers are there to shoot people and get shot at, and there's no reason that I can see why they should be paid more when that happens.
I suppose it's better PR to add "combat pay" (or "operational allowance" as the UK calls it) rather than reduce their wages for "hanging about with nothing to do" in peacetime.
The morality and pragmatism should be clearer still - who is going to care for you when nurses are off sick or deceased?
You seem to assume that they only do it for the money, which I doubt. It's a vocation, they do it because they want to and the risk of getting sick is just part of the job. It could happen any time, not just when there's a pandemic.
There are billions being paid to friends of Tories for dubious contracts
Don't play silly party political games, you cheapen your argument.
Re: Bah, scumbugs
"It's an airborne disease, you don't catch it from surfaces"
*Bzzt* Incorrect. Primary transmission vector is indeed airborne particulates*. Secondary transmission vector is via hard surfaces (touch contraminated surface, pick nose type thing).
* insert obvious joke about opening windows in Scotland in winter here ... ;)
Re: Bah, scumbugs
No offence, but you are wrong and mixing up different things.
[1]Exaggerated risk of transmission of COVID-19 by fomites
[2]Low risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission by fomites in real-life conditions
You don't need to wash surfaces/packages etc. It's even safe to pick yer nose if you thoroughly wash your finger before.
Disclaimer: This research was before the new variants, maybe be precautionary.
[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30561-2/fulltext
[2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30678-2/fulltext
Re: Bah, scumbugs
> you don't catch it from surfaces
It took just a few seconds to find the CDC and WHO disagree with you. It's not the main transmission but is one of the ways.
CDC[1]: Droplets can also land on surfaces and objects and be transferred by touch. A person may get COVID-19 by touching the surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or eyes. Spread from touching surfaces is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.
WHO[2]: Hands touch many surfaces and can pick up viruses. Once contaminated, hands can transfer the virus to your eyes, nose or mouth. From there, the virus can enter your body and infect you.[...] Clean and disinfect surfaces frequently especially those which are regularly touched, such as door handles, faucets and phone screens.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html#Spread
[2] https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public
Re: Bah, scumbugs
Yeah, they are not science and they don't disagree.
The cleaning of classrooms by "electrostatically cleaned" snake oil is just a rip-off. You can buy a lot of spray on bleach for £995. Like, 995 bottles at least.
Re: Bah, scumbugs
I'm not arguing about electrostatic cleaning. I quoted the bit I disagree with. And the CDC and WHO *do* disagree with you. Although it now sounds like you disagree with you as you are talking about buying bleach for, I assume, cleaning surfaces.
Re: Bah, scumbugs
> Schools in Scotland have been paying £995 for a monthly 'treatment/ deep-cleansing' "electrostatically cleaned" that is utter theatrical hygienics. It's an airborne disease, you don't catch it from surfaces. Open the windows.
It can be contracted from surfaces.
Do you remember the "patient 31" episode in South Korea back at the beginning of the outbreak, when an infected woman went to a service at the Shincheonji church and subsequently infected dozens of people (the first 'superspreader' event)? Well, one of those infected wasn't even present at the same service: they were simply unfortunate enough to have sat in the same seat for the following service which took place a couple of hours later the same day.
Nothing beats
...a small team of experts. Product person, UI person, couple of project managers/coordinators, 10 engineers. App for under £2m; broader rollout tops out at £5m
Instead, we pick large teams of inexpert management consultants, and five layers down some poor coding equivalent of a fashion industry sweatshop worker does the actual work, and makes a rubbish app.
Re: Nothing beats
I don't know about your two million pound, but Latvia had their app running in April, and Germany is said to have paid about 20 million.
Re: Nothing beats
It's an afternoons work for 1 programmer.
Re: Nothing beats
Actually a week's work for two programmers. True story.
Don't forget the middlemen
Reg readers might well note that figure equates to an average of £163k per consultant.
Well, perhaps £163k paid to the agencies that hire out the consultants, I doubt if the consultants see much more than half of it.
Re: Don't forget the middlemen
Well it's Deloitte so if my experience is anything to go by half of the total will be going to the directors billing £3k a day for "strategic advisory", half of the remainder will be off to the crusty freelancer actually building the thing based on his 15-years-out-of-date-experience and the last 25% split between the 25 graduates paid to make the offices/zoom meetings look busy.
Test and trace...
I'd forgotten about that. How is it going?
Re: Test and trace...
Ssh. The rule about Test and Trace is you don't talk about Test and Trace.
Re: Test and trace...
I don't know about trace, but my last Covid-19 test took 5 days from the swab to my getting the result - negative. Not really good enough to prevent onward transmission by anyone else, had I been infected.
Re: Test and trace...
> I'd forgotten about that. How is it going?
There's barely a trace of it left.
The Queen of Carnage
Amazing where such biblical incompetence can get you these days, whilst hard work gets taken for granted.
Anyway, I'm ready and available to make a complete and utter shambles of any large contract the Government might award me.