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In order to do that, I'd need some idea of what it cost. If it's just somebody on salary doing this job instead of some other job, I don't see it making a huge

In order to do that, I'd need some idea of what it cost. If it's just somebody on salary doing this job instead of some other job, I don't see it making a huge difference. If it's a few days of a designer's time and a few hours of a developer's time, which is what I would think a simple logo swap would be, I doubt that's the difference between functioning public services and a lawless, Mad Max wasteland where people sell their children for canned corn.

kypro 3y ago
I suppose I have some insight into this as I've worked for the public sector in the UK for several years. The Gov.uk estate is absolutely enormous. There's obviously all the public facing stuff, but many many more internal tools and services too which need updating too. But the change is even bigger than just this, because there's also documents and resources which teams will need to update in the coming weeks also. Additionally guidance needs to be issued across all government departments and although I've not been following this personally I have seen lengthy comms issued about the crown change. There's a huge amount of bureaucracy in the public sector so changes like this are extensively documented and planned by various individuals on 6 figure salaries before teams will even pick up the work. If I were to guess we're probably talking about a thousand people spending several hours on this at least. That said, for it to be wasteful it would need to be less productive than what people would otherwise be working on. Compared to building stuff that's never used or scraped shortly after building it, this is probably more productive than most things people work on in the public sector.
- kelnos 3y ago
  > Compared to building stuff that's never used or scraped shortly after building it, this is probably more productive than most things people work on in the public sector. That only holds water if this project means that they're never going to work on the never-used or soon-to-be-scrapped project that they'd otherwise be working on if the cypher never needed to be updated. Ultimately, of course, this project is a tiny rounding error in the government's budget, so it doesn't really matter either way.
greatgib 3y ago
Maybe it might look small if you only consider gov.uk websites but what I mean is that it looks like that everything like everywhere will be changed to take that into account: Police uniforms, mailbox, signs, ...
- dijit 3y ago
  So, the same as a corporate logo change. Since corporations seek to maximise profit over anything typically considered solely for the benefit of aesthetics: I guess a precedent exists that the cost can be worthy. 1 logo change on average 3 times every 100 years isn't that much, especially if you compare to basically any corporation outside of Mitsubishi in that time.

kypro 3y ago

I suppose I have some insight into this as I've worked for the public sector in the UK for several years. The Gov.uk estate is absolutely enormous. There's obviously all the public facing stuff, but many many more internal tools and services too which need updating too. But the change is even bigger than just this, because there's also documents and resources which teams will need to update in the coming weeks also. Additionally guidance needs to be issued across all government departments and although I've not been following this personally I have seen lengthy comms issued about the crown change. There's a huge amount of bureaucracy in the public sector so changes like this are extensively documented and planned by various individuals on 6 figure salaries before teams will even pick up the work. If I were to guess we're probably talking about a thousand people spending several hours on this at least. That said, for it to be wasteful it would need to be less productive than what people would otherwise be working on. Compared to building stuff that's never used or scraped shortly after building it, this is probably more productive than most things people work on in the public sector.

kelnos 3y ago
> Compared to building stuff that's never used or scraped shortly after building it, this is probably more productive than most things people work on in the public sector. That only holds water if this project means that they're never going to work on the never-used or soon-to-be-scrapped project that they'd otherwise be working on if the cypher never needed to be updated. Ultimately, of course, this project is a tiny rounding error in the government's budget, so it doesn't really matter either way.

greatgib 3y ago

Maybe it might look small if you only consider gov.uk websites but what I mean is that it looks like that everything like everywhere will be changed to take that into account: Police uniforms, mailbox, signs, ...

dijit 3y ago
So, the same as a corporate logo change. Since corporations seek to maximise profit over anything typically considered solely for the benefit of aesthetics: I guess a precedent exists that the cost can be worthy. 1 logo change on average 3 times every 100 years isn't that much, especially if you compare to basically any corporation outside of Mitsubishi in that time.