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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

#81

Post by SXX »

Silhouette wrote: post #79
SXX wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As far as I get it GDS cant just build things fast for the reasons you mention and refugee situation look like reasonable one to outsource it.

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

#82

Post by mondrian »

bko wrote: post #77
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.

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 m…

The irony in your example is the modern Pentagon is largely a collection of private companies.

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

#83

Post by RealCodingOtaku »

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

I would rather not hand mine or my neighbours' health data to a spy-tech firm, who will have unlimited access to their data[0].

Not having the system (it's not like it's already in use anyway) is always a good step in the right direction. And a replacement built-in UK will provide more jobs, more tax money, and digital sovereignty for UK.

https://www.digitalhealth.net/2026/05/palantir-to-be-granted...

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

#84

Post by PaulRobinson »

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…

I say this as somebody who has worked vendor side in UK public sector for a number of years.

It's policy. It's official Whitehall policy.

As a department you can't hire programmers at £100k/year, because that pushes them way, way higher than civil service bands allow. But you can pay a "Systems Integrator" - a consultancy like Cap Gemini, Deloitte, Fujitsu - £600/day for the same programmer in the same seat. So, £100k/year = bad, £120k/year via an external consultancy = good.

Then we get into actually building and owning tech. Look at the history of GDS - they were empowered to pay half decent salaries and build and own things, but then had budgets slashed and programs cut. Why? Because we can "just buy it". Yes, you won't own the IP, it'll cost 4x as much, it'll take 3x-5x longer, but at least you won't have "inefficient civil service bloat" to have to manage.

This all started in the 1980s, and there are signs of it swinging back. I was at one department last year where they were telling me they're thinking about hiring actual engineers and embedding some devops stuff internally - absolutely jaw-droopingly revolutionary. Genuinely.

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

#85

Post by shrikant »

marysol5 wrote: post #31
PunchyHamster wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The core data platform for NHS Test and Trace was not Excel based at all. It was a reasonably simple but solid AWS setup using S3, Glue and the smallest Redshift instance at the time, on top of which were Tableau/Quicksight/PowerBI dashboards. Some organisations insisted on enabling an "export to CSV" feature which was...not a good idea for so many reasons, and Public Health England (PHE) in the article found out one of those reasons the hard way.

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

#86

Post by captainbland »

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…

> and then leaving the civil service to become... an AWS employee.

Today in things that the press isn't legally allowed to describe as corrupt but would probably reach the intuitive threshold for corruption for most people who this is explained to.

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

#87

Post by zipy124 »

Silhouette wrote: post #74
zipy124 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

The salary isn't that out of line for a mid-level developer nationwide, but yes I would expect it to be higher for the southern location. They could justify the salary if it was fully remote.

Bear in mind there is a 23.7% pension contribution from the employer, so it's a roughly £62-70k total comp for a mid-level role.

Edit: Actually though, in reality I would expect a salary bump to work in the public sector to encourage one to put up with the terrible working enviornment with all the bureaucracy.

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

#88

Post by zipy124 »

regularfry wrote: post #67
zipy124 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One of the more confusing things is the branding. That job posting isn't for NHS England. Or NHS Digital, which doesn't exist any more.

Yeh, the structure is very very very confusing. Largely because you have the Hospital's themselves, then the trusts, then NHS England, or I guess now just the DHSC? And then occasionally even more layers in-between like health boards.

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

#89

Post by throw14082020 »

I was at an event in London that involved a lot of government people. It came up that Palantir was not a very good company, Someone felt compelled to shout out, oh don't talk about that here, "we like Palantir here". It is certainly the elephant in the room (elephant in cost, and a very difficult situation).

Free software from Palantir is not free. Peter Thiel's co is all about monopolies.

Oh, and don't forget to opt your data out of Palantir: https://your-data-matters.service.nhs.uk/

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

#90

Post by robertlagrant »

I was part of a UK company that did sovereign data work on NHS data. They would give NHS trusts equity in the company in return for the data, and the data wouldn't leave the company; only results of paid research studies. The idea was to lower the increasing cost of pharma studies through early data-driven work.

The company bid for this contract, and lost to Palantir. I still can't believe that a company trying to do this in exactly the right way lost to a US intelligence company.

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