First they spend 40k on a wordpress website, now this, what planet are these on

tommytee

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/6500--spent-to-fly-minister-noel-dempsey-from--derry-to-dublin-14899676.html

sickens me to the core, would have expected this a year or two ago but this is recent, Dempsey "cut you cloth u arrogant #%*t"

jmayo

o'donoghue, o'dea, callely, ahern, cullen, dempsey all lashing out on expenses paid for by us the taxpayers.
Their arrogance knows no bounds. :rolleyes:

Laminations

tommytee wrote: »

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/6500--spent-to-fly-minister-noel-dempsey-from--derry-to-dublin-14899676.html

sickens me to the core, would have expected this a year or two ago but this is recent, Dempsey "cut you cloth u arrogant #%*t"

That article reports the £6,500 expense of the Derry to London flight - it lets the man off lightly

http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/ireland/dempsey-under-pressure-to-explain-100k-trip-468271.html

Laminations

His explanation so far?

Urgent government business.

Does anyone know what the meeting in London was about?

He said he could not give details of the meeting because it was sensitive government business, relating to aviation.

How can one use the word urgent after taking an overnight in Donegal? How would taking the state car up to Derry with the driver and flying Ryanair to London the following day have made the meetings less urgent??

Rubik.

By far the biggest user, or abuser (whichever you prefer), of the Government jet has been Mary Harney. 15 journeys between 2006 and 2008, cost to the taxpayer 735,000 euros.

http://www.tribune.ie/news/article/2009/oct/11/hail-mary-full-of-disgrace/

Head The Wall

Rubik. wrote: »

By far the biggest user, or abuser (whichever you prefer), of the Government jet has been Mary Harney. 15 journeys between 2006 and 2008, cost to the taxpayer 735,000 euros.

http://www.tribune.ie/news/article/2009/oct/11/hail-mary-full-of-disgrace/

Probably cheaper than having to pay for two first class seats on a commercial flight whereever she goes

aidanodr

Hi Guys,

Just so you understand the "First they spend 40k on a wordpress website" part of this threads subject!

I am a small web design / internet company. I saw this about the €40k for this new gov website based on OPEN SOURCE ( FREE ) software. They used wordpress which is FREE to all and it seems alot of the FREE plugins to extend the sites functionality also.

**** And the Gov paid €40k for THIS. ****

Out in the real world you would be lucky to get €1200 - €2000 for this. Some companies start at €399 for a Wordpress / CMS based site built with a pre set template slapped on top, you can get templates ( the site look ) for as little as FREE and up to near €200 depending on exclusivity.

I mean €40k ... wow. Two of them a year is all you would need - but then it seems you and I paid for this!


THE SITE:

http://www.merrionstreet.ie/


SOME ARTICLES:

http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/taoiseach-set-to-tweet-as-govt-unveils-new-social-media-strategy-2259599.html
http://www.irishcentral.com/story/news/irish-media-nation/taoiseach-on-twitter--irish-government-now-a-social-media-adopter-98286689.html

And here is WORDPRESS:

http://wordpress.org/ - FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

And the zillions of plugins: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ - these are also all FREEEEEE. All can be used to extend the basic Wordpress and adapted to anyones needs.

The work is in Custom Templating and tweaking some of the code to fit a clients needs. After that the site content areas are editable by the client themselves via a backend login ( all part of and already coded into the base Wordpress Download ).

Cheers - AIDAN

mikemac

Donegal airport is about 40km or so from Glenties and well capable of handing such a jet.
Why go to Derry airport which is 94km away?

Maybe weather conditions or flight restrictions, I don't realy know.
We can trust the pilots to follow procedures, I'm just surprised they chose Derry

kuntboy

They really are stuffed full of their own self-importance yet every one of them is expendable. They're like the pigs in Animal Farm.

The_Thing

THE Irish Government’s Information Service has built a new social networking-led internet platform based on WordPress, Flickr, Facebook and Twitter called MerrionStreet.ie.

The site was developed by http://www.arekibo.com/
A list of both public-sector and private-sector clients of arekibo can be found here - http://www.arekibo.com/info/overview-ourclients.aspx

Considering the fact that there is more to the site than just farting around with some stand-alone Wordpress template I wonder is €40,000 really too much too pay for something that took 5 months to complete and will last long after B. Clown and Co will be gone from government?

Were tenders sought for development of the site? How many developers were employed during the 5 months? In what way did the €40,000 break down into individual costs?

Out in the real world you would be lucky to get €1200 - €2000 for this

Are Arekibo not a real-world company? Perhaps this then is another example of the greed of the private-sector?

maninasia

10,000 euro with a yearly service contract...not 40,000, so by my reckoning 300% overpaid!

Head The Wall

The_Thing wrote: »

The site was developed by http://www.arekibo.com/
A list of both public-sector and private-sector clients of arekibo can be found here - http://www.arekibo.com/info/overview-ourclients.aspx

Considering the fact that there is more to the site than just farting around with some stand-alone Wordpress template I wonder is €40,000 really too much too pay for something that took 5 months to complete and will last long after B. Clown and Co will be gone from government?

Were tenders sought for development of the site? How many developers were employed during the 5 months? In what way did the €40,000 break down into individual costs?



Are Arekibo not a real-world company? Perhaps this then is another example of the greed of the private-sector?

It shows the carelessness of the people buying this stuff that they don't know the market value of what they are purchasing. Have they never heard of bargaining, I know there is a tender process but surely they can set a realistic limit and not pay above that.

It appears that they don't care as it's not their money they are spending. That's it in a nut shell

thebman

The_Thing wrote: »

Are Arekibo not a real-world company? Perhaps this then is another example of the greed of the private-sector?

Its not greed to charge the maximum you can for something, its business.

Its the governments fault for agreeing to pay over the odds for something.

How you can blame the company for the governments poor tendering process, I'll never know.

Liam Byrne

thebman wrote: »

Its not greed to charge the maximum you can for something, its business.

Obviously that's where I went wrong during the Celtic Tiger years; I've always believed in charging a fair price, not the absolute max I though someone would pay.

Sigh!

Sponge Bob

You will note that arekibo have a lot of gigs in the electricity energy sector from where the government press secretary himself came 4 years ago and to where he may return in future.

No suggestion of any favouritism naturally

GSF

thebman wrote: »

Its not greed to charge the maximum you can for something, its business.

Its short termist. Any normal procurement team will look elsewhere for an alternative service at a more reasonable cost in future.

Jenroche

With regards to the government jet, it should be sold off and all the ministers made to travel Ryanair/Aer Lingus. It costs money to even have the thing standing on the tarmac. Get rid of it, I say.

Jen ;->

The_Thing

You will note that Arekibo have a lot of gigs in the private sector - IBEC and the Small Firms Association have had sites developed by the company as did the Irish Software Association.

Are we to believe that the above got the job done for a pittance while the government paid over the odds?

How do we know that €40,000 wasn't the lowest tender submitted?

I personally know of someone in London who is currently having a site developed with all the social-networking trappings as part of a new business venture - so far the site has cost around 20,000 Sterling to develop and was still unfinished when I was shown it a few months ago.

simplistic2

tommytee wrote: »

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/6500--spent-to-fly-minister-noel-dempsey-from--derry-to-dublin-14899676.html

sickens me to the core, would have expected this a year or two ago but this is recent, Dempsey "cut you cloth u arrogant #%*t"

He deserves it these people are our betters you all support this when you vote. The system is set up for him to abuse it. So to all you voters out there , If you vote you support what this man is doing and you support his right to do it, sure its only fair its democracy!

Head The Wall

The_Thing wrote: »

Are we to believe that the above got the job done for a pittance while the government paid over the odds?

How do we know that €40,000 wasn't the lowest tender submitted?

Yes there is a belief in the business world that you can charge more for Govt jobs because it seems as if no one gets a real market value while tendering.

This could have been the lowest tender, but if everyone knows they can charge more the tenders will reflect that.

ART6

Laminations wrote: »

His explanation so far?

Urgent government business.

According to my newspaper it was to be on time for dinner with friends in Knighsbridge, and a meeting at the Irish embassy at 07.30 the next morning. Urgent business indeed.

The_Thing

Head The Wall wrote: »

Yes there is a belief in the business world that you can charge more for Govt jobs...

A belief?

Or perhaps there is\was a price-fixing agreement among those private sector firms that tendered for the job - how then can the government get value for money if none of the quotations submitted are an honest costing for the job?

Welease

Is there a breakdown of what the 40K was spent on?

Without this, then people are just shooting in the dark, and most seem to be assuming the worse..

For a simple site it's excessive..
For a site, with training/documentation included, so the staff who will be responsible for maintaining and uploading information into the site going forward it's not too bad..
For a site, with the above, and consultancy into what type of site was needed before development, where the information should be gathered from, design including photographs. etc etc etc that is a decent price...

The site itself might be the end result of 6 months of work, in which case it's damn cheap..

It's alright, sure the tax payer will pick this one up and the rest in the coming budget :rolleyes:

This current government are taking the piss :mad:

The_Thing

The site itself might be the end result of 6 months of work, in which case it's damn cheap..

The site took 5 months to complete.

Welease

The_Thing wrote: »

The site took 5 months to complete.

That's all the detail that I have seen posted, but that in itself is not enough to understand the cost. 5 months is just an indication of how long it took, not how many resources were used, or what was delivered for the 40K.

Head The Wall

The_Thing wrote: »

A belief?

Or perhaps there is\was a price-fixing agreement among those private sector firms that tendered for the job - how then can the government get value for money if none of the quotations submitted are an honest costing for the job?

No, people procuring these products/services should know what is a realistic price for what they're ordering and if the tender doesn't meet that they shouldn't buy it. Would you buy a house without knowing what it's really worth?

They should then tender again and again until some thing comes within their price range. These people buy like there's no upper limit on their budget.

Say I get quotes to get a kitchen fitted and my budget is 5,000. The lowest quote is 7,500, do I go for that quote or do I wait keep looking until I get one that fits my budget.

Simple budgeting, it's not rocket science

ninty9er

Dempsey is not an extravagant person, HE did not make the travel arrangements. They were the ONLY travel arrangements that worked out.

Ryanair's claim that he could have gotten to Belfast is incorrect as he would have had to break probably 50% if not more of the road safety principles he preaches to get to Belfast City Airport from Gelnties.

Ryanair's last flight on a Monday is at 20:15. Check-in closes 40 minutes prior to departure, that's 19:35, getting to the airport from Gelnties takes 2 hours 45 according to Google, we'll accept that taking traffic etc into consideration considering he would be required as a minister of a foreign state to be transported by PSNI outrider, that gets us back to 16:50. Now considering he was due to speak at 4, we can safely assume that by that time of the day the sessions had run late and that it would have been closer to 16:30 when he started. If you take a speech time of 20 minutes and press time then he's already missed Ryanair's last flight.

Ryanair's first flight on a Tuesday morning from Belfast gets to Stansted at 7:45, 15 minutes after the meeting over an hours drive away was to begin.

Same issue with Aer Lingus and BA don't do a non-connecting Belfast Heathrow flight.

Now can we get over the fact that approx €10k was spent, when the fact of the matter is that there is a possible economic benefit from this trip in the thousands of multiples of that.

Can we also stop believing Ryanair in this instance, because under any other circumstance we all know that Ryanair could tell the truth even if its share price depended on it.

If anyone wants to brand me an apologist don't bother, he could have cancelled on the Magill committment, but the papers would have had a field day on that too.

Ten grand is significant, but it's not going to save us, and can we get this straight too. Ministers travel on commercial flights WHERE they are AVAILABLE.

Scuba Ste

ninty9er wrote: »

Dempsey is not an extravagant person, HE did not make the travel arrangements. They were the ONLY travel arrangements that worked out.

I don't buy that. I understand the difficulties in getting from Dublin to Glenties and then to London. But, if I need to be at a meeting in London tomorrow morning I simply cancel any speeches I want to give in Glenties tonight, especially when it costs me 10k to do both.

If it was coming out of his own pocket he'd find a cheaper solution, our politicians are not of that mindset when it's our money they're spending.

Sponge Bob

ninty9er wrote: »

Dempsey is not an extravagant person, HE did not make the travel arrangements.

:eek:

Todays Trib

http://www.tribune.ie/news/article/2010/aug/08/dempsey-given-5000-cash-advances-for-overseas-trip/

The St Patrick's Day trip in 2007 had already proved expensive for the taxpayer with more than €70,000 spent on the travel arrangements.


Two days of that trip marked "private" were spent at the Apple Farm Inn, a four-hour drive from San Francisco, where the minister stayed. Limousine costs to bring Dempsey to the Apple Farm Inn cost $3,000 and were charged to the taxpayer despite the time being considered "private".


Dempsey travelled to the US with his wife Bernadette and three members of staff, details released by the Department of Communications show. Flights for the Minister and his wife cost €8,139 each while three other flights for advisers and civil servants came to €6,711 each.

The hotel is indeed 4 hours from San Francisco , Dempseys limo cost $750 an hour and we don't know ( or care) how he got back from there. Pity the yanks didn't keep him

Liam Byrne

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Well, ninty9er ? Any comment to make on that ?

Sounds like a SERIOUSLY extravagant spend to me on personal time (which therefore shouldn't have been booked by a public servant).

Not to mention the fact that it's defrauding the taxpayer by getting us to pay for it.

By all means, take a day or two off when abroad for work in order to see the local sights (I did a few years back when work sent me to Toronto) but I paid for the trip to Niagara Falls on the bus myself, and rightly so.

ninty9er

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Well, ninty9er ? Any comment to make on that ?

Sounds like a SERIOUSLY extravagant spend to me on personal time (which therefore shouldn't have been booked by a public servant).

Not to mention the fact that it's defrauding the taxpayer by getting us to pay for it.

By all means, take a day or two off when abroad for work in order to see the local sights (I did a few years back when work sent me to Toronto) but I paid for the trip to Niagara Falls on the bus myself, and rightly so.

Example.

This weekend I had work and personal plans.

I travelled to Dublin on Wednesday night, booked into a hotel on the work credit card, and have claimed mileage for a return journey.

In the meantime, I spent Thursday night at a friend's house, beginning my private plans on Friday morning, I did a bit of moving around dublin, travelled to Belfast on Friday afternoon, spent Friday there at my own expense and came to Dublin today and then home this evening.

Irrespective of whether or not it was personal or private, I still had to go to Dublin for work, I would have had to make the return journey anyway, so I claim return mileage, this is no different.

Who paid for the hotel? All we know is it wasn't the taxpayer, if the minister and his wife were returning to an airport to fly back to Dublin, there would have been a "limosine" charge anyway.

If people concentrated on real issues and didn't get caught up in irrelevant minutae, politicians might be able to take criticism seriously when it actually matters. Instead we have politicians who are deaf to criticism because absolutely everything they do from 5am on Monday to 11pm on Sunday is criticised by somebody somewhere.

Pick your battles, this isn't even a cat fight.

On the flights, the cost is unusually high, but that is a premium travel time. I have no problem with people travelling business class on business to the US, but short haul flights by government ministers are generally on Ryanair, which is barely economy. If he was staying for a holiday, he should have and possibly did pay a contribution to the flights personally.

Sponge Bob

ninty9er wrote: »

If people concentrated on real issues and didn't get caught up in irrelevant minutae, politicians might be able to take criticism seriously when it actually matters.

We even have a video of Dempseys hotel room :cool:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj9W4bGVB9o

maninasia

Welease wrote: »

Is there a breakdown of what the 40K was spent on?

Without this, then people are just shooting in the dark, and most seem to be assuming the worse..

For a simple site it's excessive..
For a site, with training/documentation included, so the staff who will be responsible for maintaining and uploading information into the site going forward it's not too bad..
For a site, with the above, and consultancy into what type of site was needed before development, where the information should be gathered from, design including photographs. etc etc etc that is a decent price...

The site itself might be the end result of 6 months of work, in which case it's damn cheap..

It's not cheap whichever way you look at it, should be paid to do the job,not care how much work the contractor had to put into it. Uploading videos and text is a piece of p#ss with Wordpress. It may be the going rate however in Ireland...which wouldn't be surprising considering how broke the govt is. As for the site, it's well put together, just overpaid..for a govt with the biggest debt in Europe per head...that's a serious matter. I'd say 20,000 would have been very generous for this...40,000, get out of here!

Welease

maninasia wrote: »

It's not cheap whichever way you look at it, should be paid to do the job,not care how much work the contractor had to put into it. Uploading videos and text is a piece of p#ss with Wordpress. It may be the going rate however in Ireland...which wouldn't be surprising considering how broke the govt is. As for the site, it's well put together, just overpaid..for a govt with the biggest debt in Europe per head...that's a serious matter. I'd say 20,000 would have been very generous for this...40,000, get out of here!

You are missing point.. Until you know what the 40K covered, you or I are not in a position to conclusively decide on whether it was value for money..

The outcome of the project was a web site, but that may not have been the full extent of the work undertaken. There could have been extensive consultancy on the current communication methods utilised by the government, a plan created to reduce the channels used, development of procedures and training for all personnel involved in those communication channels, technical training for the IT staff involved in supporting the sites. documentation for all the above processes and technical implementations etc etc etc..

Or they could have snagged a wordpress template, put up a few stock photo's and been done in 2 days...

I suspect the government probably did overpay, but I prefer not to become part of a lynch mob until I actually have some of the finer details to hand..

ei.sdraob

Here we are arguing about a waste of

40,000

when our yearly deficit will approach

20,000,000,000

and out national debt is up to

120,000,000,000 with a 36% GDP defict in Q1 2010 says eurostat


may i recommend people look outside the box at the Croagh Patrick sized mountain of debt that's growing rapidly

paddyland

ninty9er wrote: »

If people concentrated on real issues and didn't get caught up in irrelevant minutae, politicians might be able to take criticism seriously when it actually matters. Instead we have politicians who are deaf to criticism because absolutely everything they do from 5am on Monday to 11pm on Sunday is criticised by somebody somewhere.

If people concentrated on real issues and didn't get caught up in minutae, we wouldn't criticise ministers, and they could get on with the daily work of robbing the tax coffers blind, and sticking two fingers up to the taxpayers who are being RAPED by this FF government to pay for the mistakes of their rotten and corrupt cronies.

Oh no, you won't get off with that one. Minister Dempsey is every bit as bad as and worse than O'Donoghue, and deserves to be hounded every minute of the day until he resigns or is sacked, neither of which will happen if down to FF alone. On the one hand, he has ruined people in this state who are living destitute due to the policies of him and his department, while he raids the coffers for personal extravagance.

People have committed SUICIDE because of the actions of this WASTER in government. He has blood on his hands, while he swans off to London in sheer extravagance, like Nero gorging on wine and red meat after watching the slaves butcher each other in the amphitheatre.

Hard as it is for you to stomach, there are too many people in this state who are sick and tired of this NONSENSE, and will not let these issues go away any longer.

Laminations

ei.sdraob wrote: »

Here we are arguing about a waste of

40,000

when our yearly deficit will approach

20,000,000,000

and out national debt is up to

120,000,000,000 with a 36% GDP defict in Q1 2010 says eurostat


may i recommend people look outside the box at the Croagh Patrick sized mountain of debt that's growing rapidly

Completely agree but when you can't convince blowhard FFers of obvious waste on a personal/ministerial level then do you really expect them to take their heads from the sand regarding FFs ineptitude on larger scales?

thebman

ninty9er wrote: »

Example.

If people concentrated on real issues and didn't get caught up in irrelevant minutae, politicians might be able to take criticism seriously when it actually matters. Instead we have politicians who are deaf to criticism because absolutely everything they do from 5am on Monday to 11pm on Sunday is criticised by somebody somewhere.

I shall put in some irregular expenses to my employer and try this line.

I shall say this is FF best practice and see how far I get :pac:

Liam Byrne

ninty9er wrote: »

Example.

This weekend I had work and personal plans.

I travelled to Dublin on Wednesday night, booked into a hotel on the work credit card, and have claimed mileage for a return journey.

In the meantime, I spent Thursday night at a friend's house, beginning my private plans on Friday morning, I did a bit of moving around dublin, travelled to Belfast on Friday afternoon, spent Friday there at my own expense and came to Dublin today and then home this evening.

And you're completely missing the blatantly obvious correlation.

Did you charge your employer a couple of grand for a limo to go from the workplace in Dublin to the friend's house ?

ninty9er wrote: »

Irrespective of whether or not it was personal or private, I still had to go to Dublin for work, I would have had to make the return journey anyway, so I claim return mileage, this is no different.

You completely and utterly avoided the point. As in my example, the flight home from Canada was paid for by work, as was your return mileage. So you're arguing a point that I didn't even make in order to suit your argument.

The ONLY parallel is : did you charge your employer for the limo from the workplace to the friend's house ?

Unless you want to answer that, don't bother replying and muddying the waters.

ninty9er wrote: »

If people concentrated on real issues and didn't get caught up in irrelevant minutae, politicians might be able to take criticism seriously when it actually matters. Instead we have politicians who are deaf to criticism because absolutely everything they do from 5am on Monday to 11pm on Sunday is criticised by somebody somewhere.

If politicians concentrated on real issues and didn't spend their time forging invoices and making bogus claims then maybe they'd have more time to spend on actual issues.

If behaviour is unacceptable, then it's criticised. If everything they do is criticised, maybe they should look at their actions or reconsider their career where the taxpayer isn't footing the bill and isn't walloped left, right and centre as a result of their unacceptable actions and incompetence.

aidanodr

Heres a link to the original RFP ( Request for Proposals ) for this website:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/34202910/Government-News-Website-RFP-Final

The services under this contract will include:

• Design of the website and associated accessible HTML templates
• Building the website according to the agreed design specifications
• Installation and commissioning of solution
• Provision of software maintenance and solution support including the associated templates, plug-ins etc
• Provision of solution documentation
• Provision of solution training and handover to Department personnel

Nothing major extra there thats any different for a site being developed for any client?

RE this training thing - What training is there? How to enter data in the TINYMCE Word like editor window? How to click the add images button? How to switch a pre installed template? Their should not be much interaction on behalf of Department personnel with the installed Plugins. If their is it wouldnt be very complex - a few fields to fill in and the like. I cannot see days of training involved here, maybe an hour or two at most?

Further down it says -

• Design of a Government News Website and associated standards-based accessible CSS and HTML templates (which should include a full range of heading, link and other styles for pages of various types (subscription service for e-mail and SMS alerts, rss feeds, printer friendly option etc.)

The "Standards" are usually "built in" with Wordpress as a solution?

On pages 8/9 all the required detail seems to be implementable via plugins available free with WP anyway. Same for Page 10 - this is just a description of what most CMSes do anyway??

Page 11 is maybe where the main cost lies - Maintenance and Support - over a year or more?

Aidan

aidanodr

Another two valid point was made here:

http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com/general-chat/11733-merrionstreet-ie-excessive-costs.html

1. Was a single unemployed project-manager, website designer/developer ... or anyone with a similar or useful skill set taken off the live register for this?
2. Was the option given to any media/multimedia students from our many colleges/courses to get involved? This would have had numerous mutual benefits.

aidan

maninasia

Welease wrote: »

You are missing point.. Until you know what the 40K covered, you or I are not in a position to conclusively decide on whether it was value for money..

The outcome of the project was a web site, but that may not have been the full extent of the work undertaken. There could have been extensive consultancy on the current communication methods utilised by the government, a plan created to reduce the channels used, development of procedures and training for all personnel involved in those communication channels, technical training for the IT staff involved in supporting the sites. documentation for all the above processes and technical implementations etc etc etc..

Or they could have snagged a wordpress template, put up a few stock photo's and been done in 2 days...

I suspect the government probably did overpay, but I prefer not to become part of a lynch mob until I actually have some of the finer details to hand..

I have operated a web design firm previously, as does the poster Aidan here. We know what we are talking about. Notice our agreement on overpayment? Remember I was being generous when I said maybe 20,000 euro is acceptable with training/help with design (training taking a few hours on what is a very simple input system to use, design process is more costly and time consuming), but I would have quoted this site for 10,000 euro no questions as would tonnes of web design firms for private companies...but government overpays and it's who you know right? They should have quoted it to a foreign firm but maybe government procurement rules prevent this.

It's a wordpress site..amateurs can easily put together sites to 70-80% of that standard.

Liam Byrne

maninasia wrote: »

I have operated a web design firm previously, as does the poster Aidan here. We know what we are talking about. Notice our agreement on overpayment? Remember I was being generous when I said maybe 20,000 euro is acceptable with training/help with design (training taking a few hours on what is a very simple input system to use, design process is more costly and time consuming), but I would have quoted this site for 10,000 euro no questions as would tonnes of web design firms for private companies

Is it a coincidence that that figure came to mind when I looked at it too, and that's with a similar background to Aidan & Maninasia ?

And that's covering a lot of backend possibilities, not just the site itself.

Consultation for requirements = €1,000 (even though many clients don't even pay for this stage)
Core site = approx €3,000
Training €1,000
Hosting = under €500
Allowance for complex backend stuff €4,500

There would want to be something absolutely phenomenal and unusual behind-the-scenes in order to justify a base cost of anything more than €10,000 - so yes, €20,000 is more than generous, particularly considering the normal server load issues - like the videos - aren't even hosted on the site - they're hosted on YouTube!

So 3 web professionals reckon €10K is fair, and €20K is happy days, covering us for any hoops we'd need to jump through to get a government contract ?

And the government still paid €40K ?

The Corinthian

aidanodr wrote: »

Out in the real world you would be lucky to get €1200 - €2000 for this.

When dealing with the private sector or SME's you mean.

I'm not going to defend such expenditure, but I will try to explain why it is so bloated.

To begin with you're dealing with the civil service and they, rather than the politicians who rubber stamp such procurement, are a large part of the problem. Any project with a large, bureaucratic body (be it a government department, large semi-state body, bank or multinational) is going to be a project management nightmare, and that and not the design, development or anything else is going to bloat your price.

This is because you are dealing with internal politics, people who will rarely make decisions unless you take responsibility for them and countless committees who all want to empire build and do everything by the book. For example, you will not be designing the logo. That job will go to another company that specializes in logo design and branding - this means that the responsibility has gone to 'professionals' to effectively cover this, thus showing that all due care was taken (i.e. if it screws up the person commissioning the work did all they could do, and so is covered). So other than adding another layer of stakeholders to the pot, the process of designing and agreeing upon the logo will probably involve numerous meetings and revisions before something is delivered. Three months if you're lucky, and that alone will cost thousands.

Then on the client's side, your point of contact will change a few times due to internal politics. Often when there's a change they'll want to start over or demand to revise any requirements, even though you've already signed off on them. And signing off on anything will take ten times as long, because no one wants the responsibility of making a decision. Indeed, they probably won't decide - a consultant from one of the blue chips, hired to shadow them, will.

Then, with large company departments or public bodies, there is the budget question. They have money to burn. If they don't they will get less next year. That's why around November and December you should target B2G sales - it's when they're looking at their budget and realizing they still have money left to get rid of before the end of the fiscal year. A PO or invoice is all they care about - delivery of whatever crap you've sold them is something to worry about next year.

And all this is before you get into incompetence, indolence and corruption. And, of course, SLA's - they're real milk cows.

So, it's not really to do with Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, or politics. It's just the nature of such large organizations - even in the private sector.

So when you think about it, €40k is a bargain.

Nijmegen

I should note that any business person you speak to who sells to government can relate the story that the public sector over pays.

I heard an anecdote from a manager who sells hardware. A person from Fingal called up one day looking for a particular part, and said he had €1,500 to spend on it. They checked, and the price of the part was €800. But they charged him €1,500 because, well, that's the price the customer said he wanted to pay!

You can't blame the business for taking advantage of that kind of stupidity.

Similarly for the travel expenses, there's always a cheaper way to do things. If he needed the jet for urgent business, fine. But why do all these goons need to ride around in limos?

Head The Wall

Corinthian - I know that's how these things get done in the PS but that still doesn't mean we should accept it. There is a lot more accountability and financial querying in a large private sector company than the PS so your comparison is a bit off



Room to Improve springs to mind in these situations. In the last series the financial controller for Kildare Co Co (I think) was getting work done on his house. He had to drop in that he was responsible for a budget of around €150m, it sounded like he was bragging about how large his budget was and the bigger the budget the better a man he was. It just sounded stink to me.

The same fella didn't like what Dermot was telling him he had to do. He was really grasping and struggling with not getting his own way and hearing the word no. He couldn't visualise what Dermot was trying to do and didn't want to let control go just cos he was too thick to see the vision. It's an interesting episode to watch just on the sociology side

The Corinthian

Head The Wall wrote: »

Corinthian - I know that's how these things get done in the PS but that still doesn't mean we should accept it.

I never said we should, as you will see from the start of my post I said I was not going to defend such expenditure, simply explain it.

There is a lot more accountability and financial querying in a large private sector company than the PS so your comparison is a bit off

I disagree about what you say with the private sector. In 2001 (post-dotcom) a consultancy spin-off of a major consultancy firm (it went chapter 11 but has subsequently re-founded, so I won't name it) commissioned from my employer a brochureware site - basic CMS, a WAP micro-site and some flash banners. It took over a year to go live and went well over the original estimate, due to changes of mind, points of contact and other bureaucratic silliness. I can't remember what the final bill was, but the original quote was Irl£145k. I've also witnessed other examples in the private sector, in particular with the mobile telecoms.

Certainly the public sector has even fewer safeguards, but ultimately this is what happens when any organization becomes large and unwieldy, and it is very difficult to avoid, indeed I suspect it cannot be fully avoided, only minimized at best - even in the private sector.

Scofflaw

The Corinthian wrote: »

I never said we should, as you will see from the start of my post I said I was not going to defend such expenditure, simply explain it.

I disagree about what you say with the private sector. In 2001 (post-dotcom) a consultancy spin-off of a major consultancy firm (it went chapter 11 but has subsequently re-founded, so I won't name it) commissioned from my employer a brochureware site - basic CMS, a WAP micro-site and some flash banners. It took over a year to go live and went well over the original estimate, due to changes of mind, points of contact and other bureaucratic silliness. I can't remember what the final bill was, but the original quote was Irl£145k. I've also witnessed other examples in the private sector, in particular with the mobile telecoms.

Certainly the public sector has even fewer safeguards, but ultimately this is what happens when any organization becomes large and unwieldy, and it is very difficult to avoid, indeed I suspect it cannot be fully avoided, only minimized at best - even in the private sector.

That agrees entirely with my experience. It's true that the public sector gets a bit more ripped off, but that's at least partly because every bidder pads their quote when it's a public sector contract.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Nijmegen

Scofflaw wrote: »

That agrees entirely with my experience. It's true that the public sector gets a bit more ripped off, but that's at least partly because every bidder pads their quote when it's a public sector contract.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Even when receiving quotes from multiple sources, I'll always negotiate each individual bidder until we're both blue in the face. There's always further to cut to the bone.

The Corinthian

Nijmegen wrote: »

Even when receiving quotes from multiple sources, I'll always negotiate each individual bidder until we're both blue in the face. There's always further to cut to the bone.

What is your incentive to get the best price?

What incentives do civil servants or (mega)corporate cogs have?