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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

#111

Post by bfmalky »

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 recently joined a civil service organisation as a software developer. The organisation is currently going through an intense hiring process to replace the army of contractors they've had for years. This has been made possible by applying a 'market uplift' to the usual civil service salary bands to make the roles competitive in the tech industry. It seems to be going pretty well, although the organisation was already quite tech focused and has a well established engineering culture. Hopefully it will be seen as a success and replicated by other departments as seems like the sensible way to get stuff done to me.

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

#112

Post by pjc50 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #94
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…

The problem is that the civil service is inefficient and will bloat, because the only pressure on it to not is the individual good practice of leaders. There's no competitive/market pressure on it to naturally cap spending based on value. I agree that GDS is a good thing, and I interviewed with them a few years ago and was impressed, but there is always the risk of bloat. I wish this could be fixed. I have some ideas…

> there is always the risk of bloat

The fantasy lies in ignoring the same risk when it's happening in a private sector contractor, doing the same job for objectively much higher costs.

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

#113

Post by pjc50 »

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…

> So, £100k/year = bad, £120k/year via an external consultancy = good.

Ding ding ding. This is all driven by ideological mistrust of the public sector, as you've pointed out and people are even defending in the comments.

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

#114

Post by dzonga »

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…

you're just pointing out elite capture & corruption that tends to be pervasive in the UK.

when I was in the UK my landlord was a politician. his peers are politicians.

an inflated contract gets given out to a private company - no one complains. yet to give people working in councils, civic sector decent | market rate salaries. now everyone complains.

I'm not even gonna go into the whole taxation scam.

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

#115

Post by throwaway173738 »

esperent wrote: post #39
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.

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".

More like “we did exactly what our constituents wanted and bought a system to do this instead of hiring a team to do this.”

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

#116

Post by andsoitis »

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…

> £100k/year = bad, £120k/year

Just keep in mind that if you pay someone a salary of £100k, your expense for that employee is actually much higher. So £120k would be less expensive and you also don’t take on thr risk and cost of developing a system (you’re getting “off the shelf”).

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

#117

Post by robertlagrant »

pjc50 wrote: post #112
robertlagrant wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the civil service is inefficient and will bloat, because the only pressure on it to not is the individual good practice of leaders. There's no competitive/market pressure on it to naturally cap spending based on value. I agree that GDS is a good thing, and I interviewed with them a few years ago and was impressed, but there is always the risk of bloat. I wish this could be fixed. I have some ideas…

> there is always the risk of bloat The fantasy lies in ignoring the same risk when it's happening in a private sector contractor, doing the same job for objectively much higher costs.

I agree, but also a civil servant has incredible pension opportunities, and defined benefit as well, and is hard to remove if they turn out to be bad. A contractor is a fixed cost, and individuals can be rejected with far less ceremony and cost.

If the civil service could shape its workforce with individualised salaries and quicker removal due to low performance I suspect it'd be a different story. I agree that consultancies and contractors are not cheap, but they are not the root cause.

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

#118

Post by robertlagrant »

sillyfluke wrote: post #102
robertlagrant wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

The market pressure I'm referring to isn't on salaries, it's on departments. If a department gets the same budget next year because it managed to spend it all this year - a universal truth in UK public sector then departments only ever grow.

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

#119

Post by as3qkaH »

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…

We can spell it out. Ex MI6 director Sir John Sawers is promoting Palantir against UK interests and Epstein associate Lord Mandelson does the same [1].

Selling out the UK apparently gives you knighthoods and lordships.

[1] Palantir was incubated by In-Q-Tel under the auspices of Alan Wade, who was co-founder of Christine Maxwell's (sister of Ghislaine) Chiliad. Chiliad was a data analytics company used in the FBI after 9/11. Thiel had many Epstein contacts and invested with Ehud Barak.

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

#120

Post by basket_horse »

jdw64 wrote: post #25

Palantir’s roots seem practically indistinguishable from the traditional Korean/Japanese dispatch programmers (often referred to as SI, or System Integration). They dispatch engineers under the title of FDSEs, but in Korea and Japan, this kind of on-site deployment is often considered the lowest tier of programming. In my own experience consulting with factory owners—advising them on hardware choices like Lumens vers…

What you’re describing is literally the entire point of their Foundry data platform
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