UK Procurement Approach Pays Heavy Poundage for a Bookmark Site
April 9, 2026
The United Kingdom wants its people to increase their AI expertise so they launched the AI Skills Boost website. Mahad Kalam writes about the new hub on his blog: “The UK Paid £4.1 Million For A Bookmarks Site.” To be frank, it stuck me as a bit orthogonal to my way of working. The UK government procurement process apparently found the system peachy keen. The fee for the software service? Answer: A piddling £4.1 million for this service.
Upon visit the website, I immediately reacted with caution. In my work for our dear leader Stephen E Arnold I encountered some Dark Web sites with a a more appealing presentation. Despite this collection of links or hub under the firm hand of the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology, the list of the agency’s partners is not much different from those suggested links that pepper Clear Web marketing sites. There is some AI information on the platform some links like the one to Trailhead’s learning center send the visitor to a third-party Web location.
Based on my experience with UK government Web sites, I formed the impression that the bookmark site needs to do a bit more in the user experience department. The cited article opines:
"I’m angry at the sheer wastefulness of the UK Government here. Our public services are collapsing – while £4 million is admittedly chump change for the UK government, there are real people behind these numbers – families waiting months for NHS appointments, children in crumbling schools, vulnerable people not getting the care they need. The waste feels particularly galling when you realize that almost no one will actually use this site!”
Kalam asserted there are businesses out there ho could have made this Web site at five percent of the cost and delivered a better, more useful product. To quote Kalam, “Do better.”
The moral of this article about a government procurement is a reminder that some taxpayer money is just wasted. The problem is not confined to a single country. The procurement pandemic has infected most countries it seems.
Whitney Grace, April 9, 2026
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