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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

#71

Post by RobotToaster »

dust-jacket wrote: post #42

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 N…

> 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.

I get the same feeling every time I see oracle chosen for anything.

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

#72

Post by whywhywhywhy »

dust-jacket wrote: post #42

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 N…

> why everyone was lining up to throw buckets of money at Palantir

Because where they are in their career at that point isn't the endgame and being the person that does the deal and throws the money around is how you get the board position where you broker those deals with governments, the NGO think tank position, essentially all the actually high paying roles.

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

#73

Post by bko »

dust-jacket wrote: post #42

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 N…

How are they "obviously evil"?

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

#74

Post by Silhouette »

zipy124 wrote: post #54
dust-jacket wrote: post #42

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 N…

The revolving door as it's known. That's part of it. Another is simply the lack of in-house talent, largely due to poor pay and conditions. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy to a certain extent. I'd love to work for NHS digital and make a difference, but all the interesting work is contracted out, so they can't keep the staff who are capable of building themselves. Also the recruitment process is terrible. Take a look…

Look at the salary on offer. This is for a dev/data job in Cambridge. The market rate for a senior developer here was around that level in the early 2000s. Today that would be a big pay cut for almost anyone with even the "essential" skills and experience.

The British government and public sector are constantly limiting themselves by being unwilling to pay market rates for the skills they need. Then they contract out needs like tech to work around the bureaucracy - but they demand so many strings attached that the little guys who are more cost effective don't want anything to do with it. And so they mostly outsource to large firms or sometimes specialist agencies who have jumped through the hoops to get all the right certifications. Naturally those suppliers are in a position to charge premium rates even for relatively simple work.

If the Civil Service built up a capable IT function staffed by properly qualified and experienced people that would surely save billions in budget and years in timescales for some of the (in)famous government IT projects and probably significantly increase the odds of successfully delivering something usable at the end of them. But as anyone who's working in our Civil Service can tell you the emphasis on ranks and pay scales and other very specific rules about career advancement are unlikely to go anywhere any time soon. Even if they did the culture of people moving around the Civil Service like interchangeable parts instead of building up deep expertise in specific areas would still be a problem.

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

#75

Post by stevesimmons »

dust-jacket wrote: post #42

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 N…

There was an article in the FT back in March [1] with the headline "NHS official pushed to add patient data to Palantir platform while also advising company".

Amusingly, the person concerned has the surname "Swindells"...

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/6c548670-0f3e-45f1-ba08-8bb6dd152...

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

#76

Post by Canada »

ChrisRR wrote: post #44
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

Have you considered just not building this kind of thing at all?

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

#77

Post by bko »

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.

Isn't it obvious? Because governments aren't good at management. There's no incentive or feedback loop. A company goes out of business if it's operationally a mess or doesn't deliver value. Not always but it's highly correlated. Governments face no pressure like this. Maybe mild pressure on the very local level. But when you get to the national level, orgs like the Pentagon misplace trillions of dollars with not so much of a protest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Accountability_Offi...

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

#78

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

dust-jacket wrote: post #42

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 N…

> Unfortunately, it's hard to escape the feeling that friends in high places, some lobbying

Agreed. It is said that Peter Mandelson had links to Palantir. (1) And also Wes Streeting (2)

1) https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/04/peter-mande...

2) https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj.s307

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

#79

Post by Silhouette »

SXX wrote: post #64
pjc50 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and: often they're prevented from building it in house!

In some countries yeah. In UK almost all of gov.uk even hosted on github with public commit history. But its kind a obvious why some system for refugees was outsourced for consultancy.

The GDS is one of the more credible parts of government IT in the UK and IME generally well respected. The government websites and online services have largely been well done. But there are limits on how much that organisation can take on with the resources it has and it's still subject to the same challenges around compensation and working environment I mentioned in another comment that make it difficult to hire and retain good people. Unfortunately it's not realistic to build all government IT projects in house that way at the moment.

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

#80

Post by mamonster »

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've always felt the main reason That most companies use Salesforce Is that most companies use Salesforce.

It's like this for most software, but as a salaryman it's better for you if you use the common software. If you have an interview you can now say "I know how to use the thing that most people use" instead of "Actually we had an inhouse system so if you hire me I need to be onboarded for 3 months".

I got hired to my 2nd job in large part because I knew how to use Broadridge Paladyne (back then it was pretty good if you got over the pretty bad UI/UX, by today's standards it's not great).

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