Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

UK government replaces Palantir software with internally-built refugee system

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 219 posts

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

#101

Post by noir_lord »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #84
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, £100…

> This all started in the 1980s

It did, I'd argue the first (and in a sense final) nail in the coffin was the Electricity Act (1989).

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

#102

Post by sillyfluke »

robertlagrant wrote: post #97
sillyfluke wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you wrote has nothing to do with what the parent wrote. >There's no competitive/market pressure on it to naturally cap spending based on value. The parent is specifically claiming gov jobs don't allow for near market rates . That number would literally be formulated by current market pressures. If that goes lower in the private sector it will go lower in the gov sector. For your point to be correct with respect…

That part was referring to the air-quotes here: > but at least you won't have "inefficient civil service bloat" to have to manage.

Right, but you simply stated but haven't explained why bloat is inevitable in the government except to say there is no market pressure applied in government. Whereas the parent is literally talking about employing people using market rates, an example based on market pressure.

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

#103

Post by tekacs »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #84
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, £100…

I remember chatting with the then-mayor of Cambridge, UK about this.

Specifically, he bemoaned how well-intentioned anti-corruption measures meant that if they wanted to lean on a startup, it was practically impossible to do so. The risk that had been mitigated was that of someone like him giving money to his family or friends – which is an understandable risk to try to mitigate! But the net effect of that was that IBM got all the contracts at a wildly higher cost and with no ability to lean on small business.

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

#104

Post by dust-jacket »

zipy124 wrote: post #88
regularfry wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That and the fact that they rip it up and shake it all about every few years just to seem like they're doing something different.

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

#105

Post by kitd »

tekacs wrote: post #103
PaulRobinson wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, £100…

I remember chatting with the then-mayor of Cambridge, UK about this. Specifically, he bemoaned how well-intentioned anti-corruption measures meant that if they wanted to lean on a startup, it was practically impossible to do so. The risk that had been mitigated was that of someone like him giving money to his family or friends – which is an understandable risk to try to mitigate! But the net effect of that was that I…

That happens at all large organisations. I worked at a large oil company and if our contracts with a vendor represented (or would have represented) more than a certain % (i forget what) of that vendors business, they didn't get the contract. As well as having vendors more likely to stay in existence, it stops the org being "morally responsible" for keeping them afloat.

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

#106

Post by benj111 »

mike_hearn wrote: post #46
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.

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.

>knowing what you need.

But if you have a government department that builds software, they can also spec it. And everyones interests are aligned.

Further you open the door to bell labs/DARPA type speculative work.

Seems to me, the type of work environment where you have that freedom, are able to open source work would be attractive to a lot of people.

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

#107

Post by e12e »

mike_hearn wrote: post #46
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.

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.

The catch is that if you don't know software development, you probably don't know what you need...

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

#108

Post by ChrisRR »

Canada wrote: post #76
ChrisRR wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The NHS does have a problem that it is built as a collection of individual trusts all using their own IT systems and after decades has an issue with transferring data between trusts.

So that's why an interconnected system is required in order to share data between the trusts while maintaining compatibility with their existing processes

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

#109

Post by bfmalky »

zipy124 wrote: post #87
Silhouette wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enco…

As someone who has recently joined the civil service as a software developer I have to say the working environment in the organisation I joined is pretty great. Salary is not high, but pension, holidays, working hours and flexibility are all very good.

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

#110

Post by ekjhgkejhgk »

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…

Exactly. And more importantly is the fact that when done inhouse the incentives are different than when done by a contractor. The latter has an incentive to keep the client dependent.
Post reply on HN