I don’t think anyone expected you to do anything other than shout this down, Sunny, but this is a perfectly sensible initiative, in line with a long tradition of of offering prizes to encourage innovation.

Recent notable examples include:

DARPA Grand Challenge/DARPA Network Challenge
https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil

The X Prize Foundation
http://www.xprize.org

Notable older examples include:

The Longitude Prize – £20,000 (c.£1.5M today)

The Rainhill Trials – £500 (c.£30,000 today)

Given the recent history of government IT procurement, it’s difficult to see how this approach can fail to be cheaper, quicker, and more cost-effective.

If you’ve ever looked at how much government departments pay for websites, you might end up concluding that paying out £1 million for a website is – by government spending standards – a bargain.

Just one (of many) examples:

The website, http://www.howsecureismyhome.com seems to contain 3 pages, 2 flash files and a pdf document. The cost was £88,233 for fiscal 2007/2008.

Just imagine how expensive a really big website is – when commissioned by a government department.

I suspect that the TPA is not protesting, is because the idea is likely to save money. Why are you protesting about something that saves money?

Also, um, they’re on holiday till January 4th: they haven’t commented on anything since December 23rd.

Mr E – that’s funny, there’s an article in the Daily Telegraph dated 30th Dec that has a quote from them.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/6906199/Classroom-compensation-culture-criticised.html

Took a break from holiday did they? Why not this time?

MT – the point, as I pointed out on Twitter, is not only about Tories wasting money, but the TPA saying nothing about it,

It has already been done, it is called a wiki.

Kevin

So, a bunch of ex tories, and American right wing nuts who fund them, who pretend they are an independent pressure group , and then do not condemn tory waste?

Shocked, I am just SHOCKED at such dishonesty.

Erm – a million quid, not to actually solve any problems, but to create a website that might, one day, lead to a problem being solved, after all the additional expense of running it and sifting out the inevitable “Mike Giggler VIA email” comments? Sounds like exactly the kind of idea which would get a shoeing from the TPA Rapid Rebuttal Rentaquote Engine – if it was a Labour idea, or if they had the faintest idea about how technology actually works.

Sunny – I take the point and agree with it; leaving aside holidays or not, the TPA do appear to act in a partisan fashion when choosing what issues to criticise. Have blogged defending Hunt’s proposals more broadly here: http://bit.ly/8MeJp8

Drewski – The innovation Hunt’s after is the sifting (and weighting) mechanism. It’s actually a very significant technical challenge to do it automatically (avoiding the running costs you mention) hence the size of the prize. £1M for R&D of a system of that sophistication is not actually particularly significant, and the commercial applications are enormous.

In a similar vein, I notice you haven’t commented on the government spending £1m – not on a website mind you, but on a TV ad for a website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8436390.stm

Where I take issue with the TPA is that the problem is not the websites but, in many cases, the existence of the “services” which the sites are promoting – which of course makes me more right wing than the TPA, I guess. In this case I’m not against Directgov as a concept but the execution leaves a lot to be desired, and the government’s gimmick will not be any better than the Tories’.

Erm….don’t get me wrong, but it’s hard for the TPA to criticise something that *hasn’t happened yet* and may possibly provide good value.

It is possible for them to criticise Labour for spending £1m on an essentially self-promotional TV ad though.

In a similar vein, I notice you haven’t commented on the government spending £1m – not on a website mind you, but on a TV ad for a website:

But the question is – have the TPA commented on it?
Nothing wrong in my view for ther govt to promote services online – it will cut down spending on paper and work in other ways and make up for its cost soon enough.

Disclaimer: I’m a web developer.

If they’d used a similar sort of attitude to getting the NHS work done, I think we’d have saved a lot more money.