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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

#41

Post by InsideOutSanta »

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…

> "Company tries to roll its own system and [saves / loses] money" is just a common story, one way or the other.

Governments build these kinds of systems ("collect data from a bunch of internal systems and show some public forms and have some internal processes for handling form submissions") all the time. When I worked for a local municipality, we built something like this every other month.

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

#42

Post by dust-jacket »

Having spent time working in UK healthcare tech, I never understood why everyone was lining up to throw buckets of money at Palantir. Quite apart from being obviously evil and so on, none of their solutions were actually very good.

Unfortunately, it's hard to escape the feeling that friends in high places, some lobbying and some er... reciprocal back scratching might have been instrumental.

See also senior staff at NHS England (or Digitial? can't remember) handing massive NHS compute contracts to AWS, and then leaving the civil service to become... an AWS employee.

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

#43

Post by InsideOutSanta »

SXX wrote: post #40
benj111 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

> It's done by one specific career bureaucrat or group

Almost all governments have a legally defined public procurement framework. If this is overridden, it's pretty much always by elected politicians, not by regular government employees.

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

#44

Post by ChrisRR »

RealCodingOtaku wrote: post #27

The contract with NHS is about 300 mil, public don't want it, most GPs don't want it, so let's drop that next.

Developing a replacement system is still going to cost a hell of a lot. It's not like if you dropped palatir then we'd suddenly have a free drop-in replacement and everyone can have their fiver back

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

#45

Post by ivan_gammel »

collabs wrote: post #36
ivan_gammel wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Ana…

I think it‘s kind of a common knowledge now that Salesforce is very expensive, so it is not a go-to choice for most startups/no-CRM-experience people. You are more likely to start with Hubspot today than with anything else, but those low-effort CRMs are also quite easy to migrate from. Google Analytics too, so it’s not exactly a „lock-in“. The lock-in happens when you struggle with your current setup or risks associated with it become unacceptable, but do not have the budget and a competent team or external partner to execute the migration.

„Everyone does that“ is definitely part of decision-making process almost everywhere, but I personally have not seen companies where it’s just a cargo cult rather than a reasonable strategic choice. The obvious benefits are that it’s easier to find implementation partners, the costs are predictable and your users may already know the system, so you won’t have unnecessary friction in your ops.

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

#46

Post by mike_hearn »

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.

Buy: you need expertise in contracts and knowing what you need.

Build: you need expertise in contracts, knowing what you need and also software development.

It's obviously easier to buy than build, especially for civil service roles where they can't attract the best developers due to political/ideological constraints.

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

#48

Post by nielsbot »

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 Palantir (or other consultancies) are friends with government decision makers (especially in the US) then spending more on a service is a feature, not a bug.

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

#49

Post by qweiopqweiop »

Honestly, a web app to match people looking for and willing to provide accommodation is completely different to dealing with the health data of an entire country that is pre-existing in different formats. The first is essentially a CRUD app that should never have been given to Palantir.

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

#50

Post by SXX »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #43
SXX wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

> It's done by one specific career bureaucrat or group Almost all governments have a legally defined public procurement framework. If this is overridden, it's pretty much always by elected politicians, not by regular government employees.

  > Almost all governments have a legally defined public procurement framework.
These frameworks are all created and administered by same career bureaucrats.

  > If this is overridden, it's pretty much always by elected politicians, not by regular government employees.
Why they need to overridden in first place? Using of consultancy services is not usually banned.

Also it's not like 4 years ago either UK or EU governments would expect they will soon want to get rid of all US companies in their public sector.

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