The UK government has decided to equip all of its 650 members of parliament with an iPad Air 2, according to a report from The Telegraph citing an official announcement from the House of Commons Commission this week.
While some have been critical of the decision to lock into Apple’s ecosystem, it’s now official with all members set to receive a 16GB WiFi + Cellular iPad Air 2 at a cost of around £200,000 or almost $300,000 US a year:
“Our requirements are for a secure, SIM-enabled tablet with a good life expectancy and capable of supporting future upgrades. “The Apple iPad Air 2 meets these requirements and is competitively priced when compared with similar models.”
The Commission also responded to comments about locking into Apple’s ecosystem by noting that due to iPads being “integrated with current business processes and infrastructure”… “A move away from the Apple operating system at this time would incur costs to change these processes.” Around 209 MPs were reportedly already using iPad.
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Question, why is it 200k a year?! not just a one off payment? Also, should they not buy one for those that aren’t already on iPad anyway? or even subsidise a little bit. Giant waste of money from Gov here.
I think they will probably pay for their data usage too
Basically we’ll probably be funding parliament to watch porn in their spare time
So watching porn is all you do I guess, if you think that is all others would do with their iPad
The UK Government is so corrupt, it would be funny if it wasn’t destroying their livelihood. This kind of thing is standard business over there.
There was a story just a little while ago about how they spend millions on champagne (!) every year for the parliamentary cafeteria, so they were thinking of switching to a cheaper brand to reduce costs (not sure whey the whole idea of free champagne for lunch wasn’t banned to begin with).
The response? The Parliamentary members were outraged! (of course). And people wonder why others consider politics to be irremediably “broken.”
To be fair, what government isn’t corrupt?
“This kind of thing is standard business over there.”
Spoken like someone who doesn’t live “over there”. It’s nice though that you like to take an interest in British Politics of course.
Over here we’d rather have them p!ssed on champs than flying planes into buildings!
Haha…I think we did it too buddy.
They’re all earning enough, why can’t they buy their own and use them?
Looks like David Cameron has maybe changed his mind on banning iMessage as well then if this is the case.
Complete waste of money from our government.
Who knows, maybe their iCloud accounts will get hacked and release interesting information (hopefully not nudes).
The reason they cannot BYOD is due to the sensitive nature of the data on them. They are purchased outright, locked down rather tightly on the government’s MDM and thoroughly managed by their internal teams.
Completely understand that! What I should of specified is that it should come out of their own pay. That way it stays locked down and then the money the government were going to spend on it can be spent on things slightly more important.
If it comes out of their pay then legally they own it and you can’t lock it down. Read the other comments… This is actually a money saving exercise
So what happens when they are end of life and no longer support the latest iOS? Ok, lets bin all 650 iPads and buy new ones. They also fail to mention the IT Support and Maintenance that would also need to be part of this scheme. Its a shame they cannot tell us the whole story. 200K may cover the iPads but they fail to tell us the rest of the cost. Just watch our tax bill go up
Assuming these are business leases not much can go wrong. Apple is responsible for servicing and at the end the typically 3 year lease they will take it back and replace with the next model.
They’re purchased outright and supported by an existing department on an MDM they already own. They also replace in some cased Windows machines that are hugely costly to support. This is not an extravagance, it’s the end result of an assessment that has taken years due to the attention it will get from the critics. It’s also going to have a real world cost of ownership benefit that will result in a lower total figure than reported here.
At least its not ‘Microsoft’ lock in, maybe they have learned from being screwed over by MS for many years. One of the better decisions the government has made. No paying for the OS, no Antivirus/Antimalware subscription costs. The iPad 2 got iOS 4,5,6,7, and 8, who knows maybe even 9, so I’m guessing they will get a good support run out of these devices.
To be fair, the iPad 2 could only seriously run till iOS 6. It didn’t run iOS 7 well and iOS 8 is pretty much unusable.
Please don’t see this as me having anything positive to say about our ‘leaders’ but …
… it is possible for this kind of IT purchase to be an overall cost saving.
It will be interesting to see if they release any figures on the business case of iPads vs costs of distributing all sorts of documents on paper.
The ipads are an option in mps loan allowance of It equipment and device. MPs can borrow up to 5 devices (so a choice of desktops and laptops and the max of 1 ipad) from parliament to allow them and their staff to carry out their roles. Any additional equipment can be purchased from parliament. items all come with an extended warranty. Ipads that are purchased are managed via an MDM.
The yearly cost my seem massive however as it has replaced a device that could actually cost more (laptop or desktop) then those costs are absorbed. In fact it could be argued that it is a cost saving. Further savings are made when you take into consideration that parliamentary committees are almost entirely paperless now which I have heard saves up to £2m a year on printing and paper.
Overall I’d say they are a good investment.
I wonder how long it will take to the Brazilian corrupted Congress will pass such indecency here too…