Revealed: Government blows thousands on iPhone apps The government spent thousands of pounds on iPhone applications - including one for jobseekers and another to show people how to change a flat tyre. Despite the recent announcement of a bonfire of vanity websites there are currently six iPhone apps available or in development. There's one to help people who can't count to …
If your unemployed wtf are you doing with a bloody iphone . And what an unbelievable waste of public money developing apps nobody really needs. Most of the iphone apps make me laugh designed for the terminally lazy who cant be bothered to use google . If you need pictures to change a bleeding tyre should you really be driving a car to start with ? .
I mean, like, Estate Agents and Bankers get unemployed too! Just because someone makes £6M in bonus one year and buys a few iPhones for a laugh doesn't mean they can't be TOTALLY unemployed now. Why should they have to go down the jobcentre with, like, the real povs when they can totally sign on from Starbucks on their phone to get their drinking vouchers?
There was a group of "less well off" people in the shop trying to get an iphone 4 when i was in there. They were kicking off (in the middle of a small, packed shop) because they had tried to get the phone for free, due to an expensive contract (at least £60 a month), and were then asked to put a £150 deposit down before they could have it, which was an extortionate amount that they could in no way afford to pay.
Maybe i'm just being cynical, but £150 shouldn't really be much money if you can afford £60 a month for a phone. I have a suspicion it would have been "stolen" in no time, or the bill gone unpaid.
These unemployed Jobs worshippers (great pun) might have brought their iPhones while in work and then subsequently been fired for being evil cult members.
Also did anyone else think fleetingly for a moment after reading the headline of this story but before actually reading the story itself that it was a piece about how civil servants had pissed our money up the wall on fart apps and Bejeweled?
DVLA are really only interested in whether your car is taxed, registered and on or off the road as well as whether you have a driving licence to drive it. On that basis not sure why they would create an app for something that is actually the responsibility of DSA (who have got off the hook before by hiding behind DVLA).
Since we are told that billions, need to be saved, over the next few years, then (while the 40-odd grand, spent on some crappy widget software, is an almost comically-shocking waste) I would prefer to look towards finding out which ever wasterel commissioned this work to be done in the first place, rather than the work itself, since it's there, that the real savings can be made.
Why obsess over the odd thousand, when we could, instead, locate the desk, behind which, sits the "half-a-million-a-year-plus-bonuses-plus-pension", who signed the cheques?
This is an interesting exercise because it illustrates the mindset. People get a good income selling iPhone apps. They don't cost much, but you sell a lot, you make a lot. Same thing with waste. You may only throw a few pennies away, but if you do it often enough...
Unfortunately, there's a tendency to focus on a few big salaries or obviously wasteful projects, all the the while there's a constant bleed of *our* money out of govt in departmental vanity projects.
The audit commission should be made entirely independent of govt, and given powers to bite, not just to report.
"The DVLA is creating something called the Motoring Masterclass, which will show the ignorant how to check spark plugs and change flat tyres, costing £40,000."
Here a fucking idea.
Search for
Car basics for begineers.
1st hit
http://www.carbasics.co.uk/
Add link
£40,000 saved.
Can I have a job for the cash cow, sorry .gov.uk, please.
"how to check spark plugs and change flat tyres"
I still can't find the spark plugs on my engine though. Maybe it's because it's a diesel?
And I thought the government were encouraging the use small eco cars, which are mostly either diesel or electric. The former don't have spark plugs and the latter you hope don't!
That, and the fact that a lot of new cars don't have a spare wheel... they seem to think that a can of 'gunk' + compressed air will do the job.
You've just fallen into the trap - selective information written into an article designed to get you to read it for advertising. This isn't the whole story. While it makes for great sensationalism, why not information regarding project objectives, why they have decided that iPhone apps are *one* of their routes to market, other routes to market they use, yada yada yada.
PLEASE MAKE IT STOP NOW! I should hardly have to say that the govenrment should not be making apps for proprietry platforms when a universal mobile web app can be made. and the cost is, as ever with govenrment projects, rediculously overbudget. there are people out there who could knock together something like this for a few hundered, not THOUSAND.
I mean seriously, in a recession, who thought THIS was the best use of taxpayers money? (and if you have an iPhone why are you on job seekers?)
In an ideal world all government spending would be detailed on a website in advance so members of the public could write in to complain about it.
I just hope spending improves under the new government...
It's no more complicated than that - governments are always desperate to look "relevant" and since the iPhone is the current technological fashion de jour it's the one that gets the attention.
Maybe with the new government's move towards looking at open source solutions this may also include a shift towards looking at government technology with at least some semblance of an integrated, agnostic, technological perspective.
"In an ideal world all government spending would be detailed on a website in advance so members of the public could write in to complain about it." There is a lot to be said for this, but I cannot get rid of the horrible feeling that it would end up like the Advertising Standards Agency, which would listen to the deranged ramblings of a few terminally over-sensitive people.* Road repairs - "oooh, no - think of the hedgehogs"; fibre-optic to every area - "oooh no, it'll mean digging the roads up and delaying my journey"; new hospital - "ooooh no, it'll encourage people to be sick on my tax money", etc, etc, etc. However, if the aim is to save government money then it will be a total success - nothing will ever get spent.
* I'm still in a state of wtf from their decision earlier this year that adverts for some cheap hotel chain could only be shown after the watershed because one person's child got frightened by a rip-off of "The Shining"!!!!
Did they? I think I bloody well missed that one. The broken front wishbone on my car fucking well didn't miss the umpteenth pot hole around here though.
Around here you have to swerve like a drunk to miss the gaping holes in the roads. I'm sure that's the case elsewhere and not just the Home counties.
This post has been deleted by its author
...for a MINUTE that these apps were developed in the UK?
The very cost of those apps suggests one of the usual suspects was involved in their creation, rather than someone in their shed, so the work was probably done a non-British company employing a non-British contractor who used staff in their base country....British involvement was probably minimal.
"- the iPhone will fall in price, like all tech does. Eventually, when they're dirt cheap, won't it be wise for the general public to have access to apps. Apps aren't free to develop!"
I'm sure you can buy PowerPC Macs from ebay these days. Problem is, they are next to useless and still come with an Apple price tag, compared with a PC from the same era.
The iToys will be exactly the same. You may be able to get a first-gen iToy for reasonably cheap.. when the 10th gen iToys are out and none of the apps will work on the old stuff. Apple is the Bang and Olufsen of computing, and you shall expect to have a similarly fat wallet to afford one.
10k will buy you somewhere around 33 days of software consultancy at ~£300/day, which is the low end of the scale. So to get a whole app delivered tested and ready for distribution at that cost represents quite good value.
These are minimal amounts of money being spent by government departments who, just for once in their miserable existence are trying to determine if their processes can benefit from using current mobile tech. But of course there was mention of the iPhone, and so the haters excoriate them, rather than making the leap to understand that innovations such as these, which have cost us fuck all, are aimed at driving cost savings.
Turns out ignorance isn't so much bliss as continual whining.
I trust this is the legacy of the profligate do-everything government we've just got rid of, and that the current government is busy plugging money leaks like this even as you discover them ...
It's just occurred to me, the analogy between the government's task with public money and BP's with its oil! Each will be happy if it can reduce a colossal flood to a manageable flow of waste ...
To be honest I resent the author using the term 'dole bludger'. There's going to be a massive amount of unemployment in this country in the years to come and it's totally insensitive to those who are desperately looking for work (as most unemployed people are). The fact is our economic system NEEDS the unemployed in times of crisis so they can force worsening terms and conditions on the ones who ARE working. Yes the iphone app is a stupid idea, but so is punishing ordinary people for a financial crisis caused by the wealthy elite. We've never been short of stupid ideas from our politicians have we?
Have a look at http://blogs.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/digitalengagement/
HM Gov comms teams are busy using Blogs / Twitter / Facebook (ie: the same tools you use) to tell you what they're doing. It's called Transparent Government.
Much of cost of designing websites is down to the costs of hiring contract developers, there's a recurring theme... Less Gov spending on websites = more commercial developers lloking for work on their expensive jesus phones!!
Fail because this story isn't worthy of the Reg, leave this to the Daily Mail
government spends money on sensible things?
10k is very little for an iphone app, 40k for a multimedia app, well we'd have taken the job , but it's hardly 'lots of money' . How long would the register itself last without any advertising? I'm guessing all the journalists work on it for free and they pay the hosting costs?
'how dare they have iphones and want to look for jobs' , yes, because when made redundant that contract just 'disappears'..
As for smuggies saying 'why not google it' for changing a wheel, good idea, works perfectly in areas of no signal. Having a simple app seems like a good idea..
As mark says , the irony would be that the cost of handling all these ludicrous FOI requests will exceed these costs by far ( though make for nice cheap copy for a multitude of journos)..
( spot the iphone dev who doesn't work on iphone stuff any more because nobody is willing to pay anywhere near the dev costs)
a) you can pick up a second hand iPhone for not a lot now, and Apps don't just run on iPhones there is the cheaper option of an iPod Touch, b) they may have bought it when they were in happy, steady employment, c) the jobcentre isn't *just* for people who are unemployed.
At least they're trying new ideas of engagement out, and at least they also made sure it was Android compatible.
(Also should be made clear, it was developed at the start of this year in the heady days prior to the election)
10k might not be as lucrative as you think. Without having seen the apps, I'm going to assume that they've got quite high production values, in which case it would probably take 2-3 developers 2-3 months (including testing and submission time) to produce.
Doing some sums on the back of a envelope, lets say each dev is on 24k a year, that's 2k a month (+ employee contributions of about £250) * 3 months is 6.75k, leaving 3.25k to pay for the office's rent, bills and other assorted costs involved in running a business before you even start to talk about profit. So, not exactly the massive cash cow you were implying it is.
If you're unemployed you must buy and iPhone.
I'm guessing with the some of the money the government has given you. Because you're unemployed.
Then you have to buy the app for job seeking.
Again I'm guessing with the some of the money the government has given you. But don't worry, becuase you're 'seeking emplyment' the government will give you more money.
All this will save you looking at the website that costs too much. (I bet you can't even look at the website on the iWhatever anyway because it uses flash)
Did anyone see the lastest episode of Futurama? About the eyePhone? enough said.
I take it that whoever approved the budget for this will be one of the first made redundant during the public sector cutbacks.
Probably not. It will be one of the poor sods in the front line unemployment office who is given the boot.
What a waste of money. It makes me really mad that people can get away with this, using MY money.
People would just not get away with this where I work. We have an inbuilt "use the money wisely" system in our company called "Keith". He asks us what we want the money for - and if its a stupid idea or one that cannot be justified he says "No". Clearly the public sector does not seem to have such an inbuilt safety/common-sense feature. Otherwise ideas such as this, and MP's Moat-Repairs would clearly not get through.
Sooooooo Mad.
Why isn't basic maintenance part of the driving test? And coupled with that, why are vehicle manufacturers required to design cars where you can do simple tasks (e.g. replace a blown bulb) by hand. Oh no. In modern cars you have to get it up on the ramp, remove the front, slaughter a virgin goat at midnight....anyway.
If you can't change a spark plug you are IMHO no fit to drive.
Getting all the useless wasters off the road who shouldn't be there could solve the congestion issue too!
you haven't seen my car's engine! tried to get at the spark plugs to give them a clean last year and could only reach 3 (its a 6 cylinder) - car ended up in the garage for half a day whilst they stripped bits off the engine so they could get to the plugs.
"There's one to help people who can't count to monitor their drinking."
You have learning difficulties and a drink problem? I think getting an iPhone app to help you is the least of you worries!
What a complete and utter waste of time and money!
See this is the curse of Gov IT, a thousand and one disperate departments, each with some dickhead in charge decides one morning on the way into work. "I know what the country really needs, an iPhone app to do XYZ! It could lead my career on to greater things! £30k should do it, drop in the ocean, heck we owe £160bn, hardly noticed!"
the DVLA app, which is a rough design and not a completed product and the money hasn't acnullly been spent, is mainly to deal with road tax and MOT and so forth as far as they're concerned, and keep people legal and paying up, but provides the how-to-maintain-your-car stuff as something you actually enjoy having on your mobile device as well as maybe a bit of extra road safety by getting vehicles maintained when needed. And there's a hazard-light mode (screen blinks orange/black or red/black I suppose). Since it didn't actually get written, you can't see for yourself.
I think someone already pointed out that if you have an iPhone and lose your job then you still have to pay the iPhone contract to the end, although I suppose they give up if you declare bankruptcy. Or if you don't have an iPhone, a parent or friend may let you use theirs.
Some developers had nothing to do because their mega $ IT project was being renamed/redesigned/recontracted out. So they play around with an iPhone between reading el-reg.
At the end of the year some manager is looking to justify not having done anything on the mega project - so he looks at what they have done and pretends that was the plan.
Next year he will just have them read an el-reg piece on hackers and bill their salary to security ( national security - can't be questioned - terrorism you know )
It's easy to laugh - but remember we've not seen them.
The NHS Apps sound great value for money - if the Stop Smoking app actually does anything useful, then it'll pay for all the others. If one person stops smoking, and as a result doesn't need cancer treatment, then a ten thousand pound app is saving money.
If a job centre app gets vacancy listings to a few people, and gets them in a job a few weeks sooner, that could also save thousands.
The total budget is less than making and/or airing a few TV commercials.
On the other hand they could be rubbish!
Why is anybody surprised? Did you really believe the people the government have any incentive at all to refrain from showering our tax money on themselves and their relatives? When you hold the purse strings who is going to keep you from hiring your cousin's firm to make those websites?
Those millions were only wasted from our point of view, not from Mr. scumbag bureaucrat-in-charge's viewpoint!
Despite everything you've been led to believe in the government's schools, the G. O. V. E. R. N. M. E. N. T. isn't there to help YOU, it's there to help THEM.
Smoking is profitable.
Lung cancer treatment costs bugger-all since it mainly consists of telling you that you are going to be dead in 6months and there is no treatment that works.
Plus it kills people in their 50-60s after they have paid all that tax and NI but before they claim any pension.
Personally I consider smokers as national heroes, alongside people who use 12mpg SUVs on the school run.
Mind you - I'm the smug cyclist that they are still going to be paying for when I'm 90 ;-)
Changing spark plugs is either obvious (if your car is old enough) or damn near impossible without a fully equipped workshop (if it's new). And quite often specific to the particular car model so any generic instructions are pretty useless.
Changing a wheel now - why not just make up a one-page guide with little sketches and print it as a leaflet. And release it as a PDF so people can print their own if they like. Fold, place in glove box until needed. No need for expensive electronic iGimmickry.
There. Sorted. 39,500 quid saved. I'll take my share in beer, thanks.
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