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NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

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Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#111

Post by bufio »

cedws wrote: post #6

I just don't get it. NHS needs a big data platform so they go to a... spy tech company? Why are they so insistent that it must be Palantir that builds this, instead of choosing from a dozen of other consulting companies that don't have a dodgy track record? Ideally the NHS would just build it in house, but sadly it's a slow and bloated organisation unable to innovate (as most government managed things usually become)…

The UK government's phobia of doing anything in-house almost certainly stems from the enormous amount of money that the political class makes from government contracts.

The NHS could be as slow and bloated as a whale corpse, but doing everything in-house would probably still be more successful than contracting fraudster companies.

Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#112

Post by 0xy »

Terr_ wrote: post #109
0xy wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time period was 2010 to 2019. Even since 2019, the NHS has several hundred billion in planned budget increases. My favorite thing about dysfunctional UK political rhetoric is when someone will say "the Conservatives are slashing the NHS!" when what they really mean is that they've slightly decreased the rate of increase, so by every metric it's still skyrocketing (but not enough to those who want to dump infinite…

Dude, I'm gonna have to ask you to back up your statements with some actual data , because what you said doesn't match the what I found at all . To be specific, I mean these charts of those countries' total spending [0] and govt/compulsory spending [1] during that time period. (Using the OECD stats visualization tool [2].) For total spending [0] UK's spend-growth was less than France's (not greater) and for govt/comp…

I'm using World Bank data (sourced from the World Health Organization Global Health Expenditure database) on a per capita basis. As you can see, UK spending is skyrocketing. The rate of increase between 2010 and 2019 is 2,000% higher than France's, as originally claimed.

I don't think your data source correctly accounts for inflation, making it essentially useless to see true costs.

As you know, France is a similar country with similar health concerns and similar hospital pressures.

Yet the UK lights taxpayer money on fire on NHS middle management salaries (care certainly isn't improving!) and France has no such problem.

Source:

- https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD?locat...

- https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD?locat...

Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#113

Post by Terr_ »

0xy wrote: post #112
Terr_ wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, I'm gonna have to ask you to back up your statements with some actual data , because what you said doesn't match the what I found at all . To be specific, I mean these charts of those countries' total spending [0] and govt/compulsory spending [1] during that time period. (Using the OECD stats visualization tool [2].) For total spending [0] UK's spend-growth was less than France's (not greater) and for govt/comp…

I'm using World Bank data (sourced from the World Health Organization Global Health Expenditure database) on a per capita basis. As you can see, UK spending is skyrocketing. The rate of increase between 2010 and 2019 is 2,000% higher than France's, as originally claimed. I don't think your data source correctly accounts for inflation, making it essentially useless to see true costs. As you know, France is a similar c…

> As you can see, UK spending is skyrocketing. The rate of increase between 2010 and 2019 is 2,000% higher than France's, as originally claimed.

I'm still not seeing it, what are the actual digits you are you math-ing in order to get 2000%? Are you sure you aren't comparing two different time ranges?

Because putting both country-lines on on the same 2010-2019 graph doesn't show anything too shocking:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD?start...

Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#114

Post by ghc »

c1b wrote: post #71
ghc wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to know (in as much detail as you are allowed) what you feel the strengths and weaknesses of CHEETAS is.

I cannot comment specifically on CHEETAS, but what I can say is that USG developing in house software solutions almost always produces a disastrous product that goes over budget and has extreme maintenance overhead. To see why, you can simply ask yourself: do you think that the unelected officials overseeing government agencies that embark on enterprise software development projects have sufficient expertise and ente…

CHEETAS isn't really developed in house though; it's mainly developed by Dell. Certainly the leadership is USG-associated, but I think the leadership is actually really good. Unfortunately I seem to be unable to get _real_ access to CHEETAS and finding anyone who has worked with it is a challenge.

I suspect underneath it's mostly Hadoop but it's impossible to separate the roadmap from the implementation without getting my hands on it.

Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#115

Post by red-iron-pine »

cedws wrote: post #102
blue_cookeh wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ideally the NHS would just build it in house, but sadly it's a slow and bloated organisation unable to innovate (as most government managed things usually become). This is patently false, a narrative often parroted by people who don't understand or have never worked in the NHS. There are many intelligent people in technical/digital roles in the NHS that innovate on a daily basis - heck, many build systems internall…

Why does the NHS have a mismatch of IT systems that don't fit together then? Why are they still running Windows XP?

I've been at three F500 companies, ones you've heard of and probably own products from, and most had Server 2003 and aging HP-UX (or AIX, or Solaris) boxes in the mix.

That the NHS has a few old systems doesn't mean jack shit.

Like, there are still mainframes in use in many places, and more than you'd think.

Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#116

Post by red-iron-pine »

kmlx wrote: post #92
dwroberts wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We currently have a Conservative government, and they hate the NHS. Anything they can do to sink the NHS or destroy its reputation and push people toward private healthcare is a win to them. I wouldn't be surprised if this Palantir stuff involves an extremely onerous contract, and probably terms that the NHS cannot even afford long term, and the Tories knowingly entered into it any way.

> We currently have a Conservative government, and they hate the NHS. while somehow simultaneously providing it with the most amount of funding ever: https://www.statista.com/statistics/317708/healthcare-expend... https://www.statista.com/statistics/632289/nhs-england-healt... but even with these colossal amounts, it’s still underfunded according to the BMA: https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-…

their primary voting bloc is aging boomers. who are fatter than ever, and with healthcare demands to match.

W Bush did the same thing with the Medicare expansion -- somehow the anti-Socialist party expanded social welfare benefits... to the one group that would vote for them.

Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#117

Post by mdhb »

neilv wrote: post #89
mdhb wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine after thinking about it for more than thirty seconds some rather obvious problems begin to emerge with this approach.

What's an example problem? (Something about building a company of power-seeking people who don't notice, or aren't bothered by, ethical questionability? Some companies have herded those well enough, and thrived for decades, like that.)

That’s what you want from a company that suddenly has access to you and the rest of the countries personal health data where you can’t opt out?

This isn’t a cryptocurrency company. It’s at the core of a public service handling some of the nations most sensitive data.

Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#118

Post by [deleted] »

redcobra762 wrote: post #16
ramesh31 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Must respectfully say that this company should not be allowed to exist. We are outsourcing state level powers to a completely opaque private entity with zero accountability. This can only end badly.

What does “state level powers” even mean? And they’re hardly “opaque”, at least not any more than any other publicly traded company is, and held to similar account. What do you think they do that’s so above-and-beyond what a non-government organization should be able to do? I wonder if you’re falling for a lot of the marketing hype…

[deleted]

Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#119

Post by anigbrowl »

tptacek wrote: post #43
anigbrowl wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normal humans don't try to communicate directly with each other through the media.

Have you ever been on public transit in DC? There are billboards all over the place (or were a decade ago when I was there last) that are clearly sales efforts targeting like 4 people. It's not that weird.

I have not, though this doesn't surprise me from seeing how lobbyists buy ads on TV and the net. What I'm saying is that the people paying $$$ to communicate with US Senators or Fortune 500 CEOs like that are operating on a different level from regular people.

If you write a letter to the newspaper, you might hope to influence one person, or the general audience of the paper. If you feel so strongly about something that you compose an op-ed, you'll also have to do the work of persuading a feature editor to publish it (although this isn't too hard, if it seems like it fills the news hole). That's a bit less accessible than a letter to the editor. If you're buying full page ads, you're leveraging capital that most people don't have to go outside of regular interpersonal communication channels.

Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#120

Post by tptacek »

anigbrowl wrote: post #119
tptacek wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever been on public transit in DC? There are billboards all over the place (or were a decade ago when I was there last) that are clearly sales efforts targeting like 4 people. It's not that weird.

I have not, though this doesn't surprise me from seeing how lobbyists buy ads on TV and the net. What I'm saying is that the people paying $$$ to communicate with US Senators or Fortune 500 CEOs like that are operating on a different level from regular people. If you write a letter to the newspaper, you might hope to influence one person, or the general audience of the paper. If you feel so strongly about something t…

I think they're operating on the level of people who are working to close deals worth 8-9 figures who know exactly where the 4 decision makers they're targeting are going to be at 8:30AM and 5:30PM. There's not much more to it than that; the only real observation to make here is "these deals are worth a lot of money".

I've priced doing billboards just for funsies --- to make a (snarky) point, not to make money. It's not that expensive! Also: how could it be? Look at some of the terrible billboards out there. There are a series of I-55 billboards advertising a single self-published book of poetry.

Your original statement was "normal humans don't try to communicate directly with each other through the media". I think you're using a pretty idiosyncratic definition of "normal" there. The phenomenon you're labeling abnormal is I think actually pretty common.

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