[toyg]

I'm not so positive. There is potential for this to become just another way to channel pork to friends and cronies. Which, considering the track record of the current executive, is probably the most likely scenario.

I'm all for DARPA-like initiatives, but when it comes to taxpayers' money we should have decent accountability mechanisms.

[mytailorisrich]

Accountability and obligation to disclose information on demand to the public are two different things.

Not all of DARPA's work is public, yet I'm sure that DARPA is fully accountable.

By excluding this new agency from FOI the UK government simply wants to be able to decide which projects to publicise and when, and which projects to keep secret, in the same way as DARPA operates.

[libertine]

Usually these initiatives should be extremely transparent, and they're the exact opposite. That's not good.

A current example is the covid 19 vaccine contracts, which were multi billion dollar/euro/pound deals, with accelerated research and approvals, and so far only one contract was made public.

It is specially concerning when some vaccines were developed with public funding.

[dageshi]

It doesn't matter.

Genuinely, the only thing that mattered was working, safe vaccines as quickly as possible. Whatever government paid is absolute peanuts compared to the costs associated with locking down economies let alone the lives potentially saved.

Covid19 was and is a crisis, you may well have a point in terms of other initiatives in this space, but with covid all that mattered was finding a solution as quickly as possible.

[libertine]

Well, I disagree.

It matters a lot, because who the hell knows what else is going on those contracts. It's not like any pharmaceutical company was gonna sit this one out.

Some of these companies were into shady shit in the past, and while they are playing a role in this pandemic, I'd be way more comfortable know exactly what they are getting out of this and at what cost to the tax payers.

[lordnacho]

> all that mattered was finding a solution as quickly as possible

What's to stop someone spending a bunch of money on a dead-end project that benefits them and no-one else, and then saying "hey, it's risky, bummer we couldn't make a vaccine"?

We can be generous to make sure it gets done by someone, but we should also make sure that people actually try.

The current UK government has a lot of stories about procurement, and it gives the impression that they mainly benefitted their friends, with the procurement of PPE and vaccines being a nice side-effect.

[dageshi]

In the context of shutting down significant percentages of economies for months, in the context of the government (in the UK) providing furlough schemes where they pay peoples salaries, in the context of essentially banning most social interaction and the population slowly going a bit mad, what the hell does it matter if we fund some dud vaccines? What does it even matter if some are outright corrupt and do nothing?

It's the worst kind of bike shedding, it's "well we can't do much about the most life changing event since WW2 but we sure can argue about the transparency of contracts!"

[lbriner]

What stops it is 1) Not awarding money to people who might be able to do it, only to those who can demonstrate that they can do it 2) Caveating the bulk of the payment to the successful production.

In most cases, the money was for a pre-order of vaccines afaik and if they don't produce, they don't get paid.

PPE contracts was another cock-up all together!

[throwaway0a5e]

>Usually these initiatives should be extremely transparent, and they're the exact opposite

The downside is that when they're too transparent politics gets involved and you can't study touchy things because people don't want the risk of conclusions they don't like.

Imagine the uproar if the navy said they think asbestos PPE might be less lethal than what it's protecting you from in some circumstances so they were planning on researching it. Congressmen would get involved. They'd grandstand and make all sorts of sound bites for the cameras. And the research wouldn't get done or it would have to be neutered in order to get done. Look at the political football that is women's PT requirements for the armed forces for a more mild real world example.

Of course, if there's no transparency involved the risk is MK-Ultra type crap which is bad too.

[libertine]

Well then maybe that's the cost of it, the public scrutiny of touchy things and political responsibility to justify such endeavors. It's like accountability is a bad thing.

If politicians would refused that, then that's a problem of politics, not of transparency.

I do understand that some subject might be too difficult to explain to the public, but that's more of an annoyance and extra work then anything else. Also could be a symptom of a education system with a lot of problems.

[andy_ppp]

The current UK government has a blacklist of left wing journalists who they won’t respond to freedom of information act requests and they are fighting a culture war about bullshit while Dominic Cummings has the gall to claim his friends happen to be the only marketing company in the UK who are trustworthy!

[andy_ppp]

References:

Jornalists FOI clearing house: https://bylinetimes.com/2021/02/01/an-important-victory-in-t...

Culture war: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/universities-...

Dominic Cummings claims:

Cummings described Frayne and Wolf as his “friends”, but added: “Obviously I did not request Public First be brought in because they were my friends. I would never do such a thing.” He said he “requested” civil servants hire the firm because, in his experience, it was the only company with the expertise to carry out the required focus groups urgently.

From: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/15/revealed-cummi...

Not sure why I've been down voted?

[dohnuts1919]

> The current UK government has a blacklist of left wing journalists who they won’t respond to freedom of information act requests

Source?

Also, isn't it illegal to not respond to valid FOI requests? Otherwise wouldn't that defy the whole point of FOI?

[andy_ppp]

https://bylinetimes.com/2021/02/01/an-important-victory-in-t...