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UK government replaces Palantir software with internally-built refugee system

bbc.com

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Re: UK government replaces Palantir software with internally-built refugee system

#31

Post by marysol5 »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #10
stuaxo wrote: post #3

"In a 2023 blog post, external, Palantir described the challenge of combining data from multiple government systems containing tens of thousands of visa applications and hundreds of thousands of accommodation offers." This is the kind of thing GDS and other Civil Service departments build all the time, its a completely standard kind of challenge that a small team of Devs (+ supporting staff) from a departments DDAT d…

Could probably be moderately complex excel sheet. Well, hopefully not but keeping that one guy that know how it works is still cheaper than Palantir!

They did that with the COVID19 tracker.

And ran out of rows

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54423988

Re: UK government replaces Palantir software with internally-built refugee system

#32

Post by marysol5 »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #7

Palantir needs to be banned in every EU country. The UK would be wise to do the same. I would never trust an openly MAGA company.

That "Press Release" they put out with echos of Nazi Germany should have been enough for anyone

Re: UK government replaces Palantir software with internally-built refugee system

#33

Post by rozab »

My parents took in a Ukrainian family as part of this scheme, and I knew many others who did. They all matched with each other through Facebook groups set up for this purpose. I don't know anyone who was matched automatically by the Palantir thing

Re: UK government replaces Palantir software with internally-built refugee system

#35

Post by ownagefool »

simonsarris wrote: post #2

There's not really enough info to know if this is just a coin toss or something more. "Company tries to roll its own system and [saves / loses] money" is just a common story, one way or the other. For context, the Homes for Ukraine refugee scheme cost 2-3 billion as of 2023. I can't seem to find an updated cost. This cost (from the article) was Palantir working for free for the first 6 months (could they have beat th…

I worked on a small part of one of these back in around 2013 ( specifically managing beds ).

You were talking about a team of 5 cranking this out in about 2-3 months with some longer term part time involvement, with an annual cost of less than 1m and those people mostly all dellivering several product lines ( so actual cost is half or a quater ).

Re: UK government replaces Palantir software with internally-built refugee system

#36

Post by collabs »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #30
logotype wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reads like Salesforce to me, ugh! Enterprises are paying so much to blatantly vendor-lock in themselves using hundreds of "Salesforce engineers". It's baffling to me.

I owned Salesforce setup with 4 engineers and 500+ licenses. I don‘t see how could I replace our SF setup with an in-house product on the same budget within reasonable timeline. We won local competition within a few years, because our sales could use good CRM from day 1 and our competitor, according to the rumors I heard, could not calculate properly sales agent commission. Vendor lock-in is not always a stupid thing…

Zoom out a little though. I've always felt the main reason That most companies use Salesforce Is that most companies use Salesforce.

I'll give you an example. At a previous employer, We used Google Analytics. We paid for Google Analytics. I feel positive that as a mid size company, We shouldn't have paid for Google Analytics. The free product with 50 events in GA4 should be plenty for us. But why do we use Google Analytics in the first place? Because everyone uses Google Analytics.

I agree that sometimes Salesforce might be a good idea. However, it should be a part of an overall strategy, not just because everyone does it. This kind of deliberate tooling strategy is difficult though because the way Google Analytics or Salesforce works from what I understand is make marketing folks feel they are specialized in Google Analytics or Salesforce so they feel like they have to keep using it or their skill will become useless.

It is like resume driven development but for the whole business.

Re: UK government replaces Palantir software with internally-built refugee system

#37

Post by Symbiote »

benj111 wrote: post #29
Centigonal wrote: post #9

Palantir is very expensive. This is because: 1. they aim to deliver product company margins with a consulting-heavy model. 2. your software purchase funds a cadre of "free" FDEs and deployment strategists who customize your install, build a bunch of data pipes/transforms, and talk to people to figure out what all the data means. This could be a good deal if your tech org is not very competent at integrating your data…

I never understood why nation states pay outside companies for this stuff. You need the expertise to actually evaluate what you're getting anyway. Incentives are in no way aligned. At the state level you have the scale to do it in house.

If a senior government employee can get a very expensive Palantir contract approved, they have a good chance of a much better paid job at Palantir in the future:

https://www.thenational.scot/news/26055524.palantir-hired-30...

Re: UK government replaces Palantir software with internally-built refugee system

#38

Post by InsideOutSanta »

stuaxo wrote: post #3

"In a 2023 blog post, external, Palantir described the challenge of combining data from multiple government systems containing tens of thousands of visa applications and hundreds of thousands of accommodation offers." This is the kind of thing GDS and other Civil Service departments build all the time, its a completely standard kind of challenge that a small team of Devs (+ supporting staff) from a departments DDAT d…

Yeah, this exactly. "multiple government systems", "tens of thousands", "hundreds of thousands" is the typical "part-time allocation for four people in an office" government project. This should have a budget in the low hundreds of thousands of £ at most.

Re: UK government replaces Palantir software with internally-built refugee system

#39

Post by esperent »

benj111 wrote: post #29
Centigonal wrote: post #9

Palantir is very expensive. This is because: 1. they aim to deliver product company margins with a consulting-heavy model. 2. your software purchase funds a cadre of "free" FDEs and deployment strategists who customize your install, build a bunch of data pipes/transforms, and talk to people to figure out what all the data means. This could be a good deal if your tech org is not very competent at integrating your data…

I never understood why nation states pay outside companies for this stuff. You need the expertise to actually evaluate what you're getting anyway. Incentives are in no way aligned. At the state level you have the scale to do it in house.

Plausible deniability. "We paid £5 million for consultants who recommended this system, it's not our fault it turned out to be a steaming pile of crap that wasted £20 million and took 3 years".

Re: UK government replaces Palantir software with internally-built refugee system

#40

Post by SXX »

benj111 wrote: post #29
Centigonal wrote: post #9

Palantir is very expensive. This is because: 1. they aim to deliver product company margins with a consulting-heavy model. 2. your software purchase funds a cadre of "free" FDEs and deployment strategists who customize your install, build a bunch of data pipes/transforms, and talk to people to figure out what all the data means. This could be a good deal if your tech org is not very competent at integrating your data…

I never understood why nation states pay outside companies for this stuff. You need the expertise to actually evaluate what you're getting anyway. Incentives are in no way aligned. At the state level you have the scale to do it in house.

Because "nation states" are not one making decision either. It's done by one specific career bureaucrat or group of them and even best of people who work on such positions usually choose it because of job security and stability.

Spending 10x more on IBM or Palantir can't get them fired, but trying to build something in-house their organization don't have competence for can get them fired.

And this is even if you don't take lobbying or corruption into account.

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