What it costs vs what it costs
I still think you're being generous at £500 ; this also assumes that HMRC don't employ anyone who is a DBA :)
But I think everyone who posts "how much it would cost" might be missing the point - it's obvious to anyone the cost of doing the actual work is peanuts.
Many of these contracts are scams - see Computer Weekly for endless examples of such. Sometimes costs are loaded post completion to get the headline cost or overrun down (as with Capitas CRB deal where endless repeated CRBs are required).
Companies with financial nous get lock in deals which allow them to later milk the public sector at will. PFIs are another example ; companies charge inflated sums for any work not specifically in the contract.
It strikes me as highly likely that this quoted figure is not the actual cost of doing it, but the cost of getting *EDS* to do it - and the reason it is so high is because EDS can more or less charge what they like, because the contracts state that *only* EDS can do it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
