how much do you think the scanning cost?

[loltolhurst]

In the times today guess how much we have paid to have the mps expenses scanned and blanked out.

£1 million. Thats £1million.

How could it possibly cost that much jesus I could have got 100 people off here hired some scanners and done it for a 10th of that.

unfffingbelievable

[Kinky]

£1.5m is what was quoted on QT this week

[Taita]

Companies will treble their quote if it is being paid for by Gubberment.

[FourWheelDrift]

Black marker pens are expensive.

[Jasandjules]

Well, 1 scanner is £250. BUT if the Govt are paying, we'll call it £250,000. Then we have the man scanning in the pages - that's £100 per hour for Govt contract.

[Plotloss]

FourWheelDrift said:

Black marker pens are expensive.

They got the black squares in bulk from Readers Wives.

[loltolhurst]

so quickrough calc:

my mp has approx 800 pages scanned

times this by 650 for all mps = 520,000 pages

sounds a lot but a decent scanner does over 200ppm and this company claims to do 500,000 pages a day: http://www.datacapture.co.uk/services/scanning-ser...

do they really charge say 500k for that and then have 500k for some people with black pens??? thats a pound a page my local newsagent could beat that tenfold ffs..

[rpguk]

I should imagine the figures quoted would include legal advice and consultation on what should and shouldn't be blanked out rather then just the actual cost of scanning?

[loltolhurst]

rpguk said:

I should imagine the figures quoted would include legal advice and consultation on what should and shouldn't be blanked out rather then just the actual cost of scanning?

they should get their money back if so after the way the public have reacted to it!

[Chris Type R]

They almost certainly had to pay higher staff costs for staff with appropriate security clearances. Wouldn't want a digital copy of the pre-censored information ending up in the wrong hands

[Gareth79]

The other thing was that IIRC everything had to be sent to each MP for approval, and I bet there was a lot of correspondence going back and forth about what should/shouldn't be included, until the blanket rules were decided. Remember that The Telegraph has copies of letters etc. that went with each claim, and all that had to be filtered out.

[Mclovin]

there i was thinking blairs £260 charge to expenses for shredding his expenses was either a bit much or there were so many documints to be salivated on that a big charge was needed.....

[esselte]

Are the people that did the scanning not employed by the gov. anyway? If so then it cost nothing extra as they were being paid whatever they were doing..or am I missing something..

[oyster]

esselte said:

Are the people that did the scanning not employed by the gov. anyway? If so then it cost nothing extra as they were being paid whatever they were doing..or am I missing something..

So if we got all the government employees to build giant pyramids in central London it wouldn't cost us anything because they are being paid already?
Interesting method of resource budgeting you have.

[esselte]

oyster said:

esselte said:

Are the people that did the scanning not employed by the gov. anyway? If so then it cost nothing extra as they were being paid whatever they were doing..or am I missing something..

So if we got all the government employees to build giant pyramids in central London it wouldn't cost us anything because they are being paid already?
Interesting method of resource budgeting you have.

Only for materials.....the labour is already paid for....

[FourWheelDrift]

esselte said:

Only for materials.....the labour is already paid for....

They weren't sat on their bums doing nothing until this project came along. They all have jobs no matter how pointless and wasteful they might be. To get 100 out of their current jobs to do this would have meant having to get 100 replacements to do their work instead.

[brotherharry]

... and the fruits of their labour are now online :
http://mps-expenses.guardian.co.uk/

good site, allows crowd sourcing to review all the documents...

[esselte]

FourWheelDrift said:

esselte said:

Only for materials.....the labour is already paid for....

They weren't sat on their bums doing nothing until this project came along. They all have jobs no matter how pointless and wasteful they might be. To get 100 out of their current jobs to do this would have meant having to get 100 replacements to do their work instead.

So you're saying that any time any extra/different work comes along they employ more people..? I'm not surprised the public sector is so large...

[Muncher]

Sounds broadly similar to the type of work that would be done by someone in my team.

We charge 18p per page for both printing and scanning and the redacting/organising of the documents would be charged out at £200 per hour. It's entirely possible it could cost that much...

[oyster]

esselte said:

FourWheelDrift said:

esselte said:

Only for materials.....the labour is already paid for....

They weren't sat on their bums doing nothing until this project came along. They all have jobs no matter how pointless and wasteful they might be. To get 100 out of their current jobs to do this would have meant having to get 100 replacements to do their work instead.

So you're saying that any time any extra/different work comes along they employ more people..? I'm not surprised the public sector is so large...

ALL work costs money. Doesn't matter if you'd be there and be paid anyway.

I'd love to know what line of work you're in that makes you think extra work is 'free'.