As others have commented, I think the animosity against this announcement isn't necessarily that it wouldn't be successful, just that it's a clear attempt to widen and hush up the current government's already large grift pipeline.
FWIW, from my experience in UK public projects, I think the question of how to improve their varied success is complex and would take a long time to fairly cover. Though, off the top of my head:
* Pay market rates; non-private research seems to be struggling to attract and retain talent due to the lower wages, and without meaning to be unkind to anyone in particular, there is an evaporative effect where those that leave tend to be higher achievers that can find better offers elsewhere, so the organisation becomes increasingly mired and less functional over time.
* End the mentality of "promotion" meaning "to management", which eliminates at a stroke any meaningful technical contribution from the promotee. I think this one is improving lately, but it's taking a long time to undo the damage of the 1990s–2010s.
* Have advisers for scientific programmes at the level of policymaking, and *listen to them*. It's vexing enough from the outside, but an acquaintance employed in this capacity for the previous government described the scene from inside as "a shit show".
The restrictions on FOI may be an attempt to allow the government to directly pay market rates and otherwise do the things they normally have to hide via an outsourcing partner.
Look at what happens when the Daily Mail and/or opposition MPs find out that an IT boffin is being paid more than a nurse. They stoke unjustified outrage until the hospital is forced to outsource to Crapita to hide its costs.
There are some routes in government (that don't involve crapita or their ilk) for getting access to good people where there's a need to pay more than standard civil service rates. If you want to bring top-level talent in house, rather than rely on expensive day-rate contractors, rigid pay-scale models start to get in the way very quickly, and hinder the ability to do anything.
It would definitely seem reasonable to shield a high-tech risk-taking organisation from overtly political attacks that ultimately jeapordise its mission - even the need to accept and handle FOI requests, correctly applying an existing exemption, will introduce more friction on an R&D-heavy, tech first organisation. If the programme managers are expected to spend a day a week checking FOIs to ensure the exemption claimed is accurate and valid, this just detracts from the mission.
It's strange this is the aspect people hare focused most on - one easy way to avoid the issue would be to set it up within the MOD as a defence research facility (as DARPA was). Making it more civilian focused may give better outcomes, but you raise a good point that if this initiative is held back by inability to pay market rate (and performance bonuses), it may end up worse in the long run.
In terms of raw salary, I think the current mess is more a result of the government's own "pay cap" crusade over the last decade—I haven't known anyone really be against the idea that public sector salaries should at least have kept pace with inflation, and I feel like there wasn't really any call for the dirty tactics the government has brought to negotiation over the past few years.
But you're probably right that public visibility has spoiled other perks that are otherwise part of a functioning job—travel to conferences, overnight stays, on-site food outlets; it feels like they've all been cut from fear that they could end up as a bile-filled column in the Mail.
As an aside, I've gladly said to many people that as an IT boffin, nurses should be paid more than me!
> In terms of raw salary, I think the current mess is more a result of the government's own "pay cap" crusade over the last decade—I haven't known anyone really be against the idea that public sector salaries should at least have kept pace with inflation, and I feel like there wasn't really any call for the dirty tactics the government has brought to negotiation over the past few years.
A general "pay scale" mindset is also part of the issue - when you try to put everyone on a scale that was designed around a model of generalists, it starts to fall apart when you need specialists skills that industry also wants. Government simply won't get the skills it requires, with the experience needed, if it insists on paying a 10-year experienced senior engineer with niche skills less than their non-technical generalist senior.
> But you're probably right that public visibility has spoiled other perks that are otherwise part of a functioning job—travel to conferences, overnight stays, on-site food outlets; it feels like they've all been cut from fear that they could end up as a bile-filled column in the Mail.
This is definitely a factor too. There is often a culture of cost-cutting in the wider public sector for the purpose of "being seen to be frugal". I've watched people (in their best intentions to be frugal) waste huge amounts of money, through short-sighted attempts to save money through false economies. Think people booking hotels dozens of miles from their destination to get what they perceive to be a cheaper room, without then thinking about the travel cost and time. Think booking a budget airline ticket to get to the wrong side of London, then rushing across London to get to the airport late for an expensive long-haul flight they now had to re-book... Or booking a hand-baggage only fare for a flight they know they'll take hold luggage for, then paying airport rates to check in luggage.
I've seen dedicated public servants doing early morning rush-hour trips to London to avoid staying overnight, because their "hotel allowance" per night wasn't enough to stay in London. The cost-differential between their ensuing peak-time early morning train ticket and an off-peak one the night before was such that they could have covered the "surplus hotel cost", had a nice dinner, and still had change left over. Computer says "no", common sense says "yes". All, as you say, to ensure nobody is seen as benefiting from anything remotely resembling a "perk".
All this makes it really hard to hire in good people, sadly.
> There is often a culture of cost-cutting in the wider public sector for the purpose of "being seen to be frugal". I've watched people (in their best intentions to be frugal) waste huge amounts of money, through short-sighted attempts to save money through false economies.
One hundred percent... we probably all have stories of this that could go on forever! For my part, one of the most costly ways I've seen it manifest is a culture of treating staff time as free in comparison with any expenditure. Getting a purchase—even say a £10 book—is a protracted process that ends up draining hours of multiple peoples' time trying to find and convince a budget holder and get the right forms signed, and even that often doesn't meet with success. It's a double-whammy for wastage because there's not just the gross cost of funding staff doing this, but the opportunity cost of lost productivity on whatever else they would have been working on.
> For my part, one of the most costly ways I've seen it manifest is a culture of treating staff time as free in comparison with any expenditure. Getting a purchase—even say a £10 book—is a protracted process that ends up draining hours of multiple peoples' time trying to find and convince a budget holder and get the right forms signed, and even that often doesn't meet with success.
1000x this. First it's ignoring the opportunity cost, but there's also the lack of acknowledgement of staffing costs (as they are considered sunken) - the person's pay was already budgeted for, but the £10 book hasn't been budgeted for. Also using up the time of senior (valuable and expensive) people in these kinds of processes. The argument is always that it prevents fraud or corruption, but anyone who knows internal processes would realise that there are far easier (and more lucrative) ways to commit fraud or corruption than the travel expenses system, that would be far harder to detect, and far easier to explain away.
2 more big problems that need solved (one of which alludes to your point):
- Your book is a capital expenditure, but the people administering the kakfa-esque process of approving your expenses are paid as opex. Your department has an Opex budget it aims to spend each year. There's no recognition that "money is money" -- if your budget is for capex, it cannot be used to buy a book! And vice versa! In some organisations (generally handling research grants), money is further ring-fenced into buckets like "Travel & subsistence" and "consumables". Even mid-pandemic, good luck spending money set aside for Travel & subsistance on a consumable, even one arising directly from not being able to travel...
- Annualised accounting, meaning budgets disappear into thin air on the 5th of April, thus driving spend to happen sooner than it needs to, and creating a culture of "spend it or lose it" - the inability for funds to roll over, even when there's a good reason, leads to programmes being pushed to spend more money faster. Letting funding roll over, by allocating budgets as "cash" would be so much more effective.
I hope ARIA will be able to escape from annualised accounting and simply spend its budget, without worrying about capex/opex etc.
I'd be fine with this project, just without the FoI exception and under a government that didn't constantly break FoI laws and that didn't have endless examples of giving contracts corruptly to incompetent friends and donors.
I understand the FOI misgivings, playing devil's advocate:
(1) DARPA (and NASA) appear to be models. Secrecy and unaccountability are a big part of what makes them them. (2) The state of university grant making is currently terrible. A lot of what makes it terrible is accountability.
A agree with the premise that you need independence to pursue high risk stuff. The whole premise is investing in things that most people think it are stupid and will never work. That's just not compatible with standard accountability norms.
Meanwhile, as you say, contracts go to insiders regardless. It's not like FOI is preventing this corruption. I also feel that (at least on this thread) the British take on corruption is overblown. Was there ever a time or place where sleeping with the mayor of London was not good business? £100k seems cheap. Not saying this is good, just that I don't see the escalation that some here see.
Federal Reserve Banks (including the US) often have no FOI responsibilities either, the reasoning being that it prevents politicization and popular pressure from influencing monetary policy.
Allow public oversight - the reason people from the uk are unimpressed is because we have no trust in this governments ability to not give large contracts to friends and donors rather than actually talented engineers with good ideas. The tories have a long and storied history of mishandling public science and technology funding in this country.
A great book I read called Bad Buying by Peter Smith covers most of the issue. If you want success, you need to ask the right questions, define success criteria, contract properly etc.
On the one hand it is good that they recognise that big wins often involve big risks. On the other hand, it is important that they decide how to tell the difference between great potential and milking the cash cow.
As long as they have an independent ethics group who can make sure nothing untowards happens, it might be OK!
Leaving this specific agency/project aside, what would be the right way to do this? How do we do public investment in high risk projects well?