151–160 of 219 posts
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
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…
> 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.
actually kind of makes sense. The £600 a day is as long as you need it and can be stopped when you don't. A £100k government employee basically has a guaranteed job for life and gold plated pension.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> £100k/year = bad, £120k/year via an external consultancy = good actually kind of makes sense. The £600 a day is as long as you need it and can be stopped when you don't. A £100k government employee basically has a guaranteed job for life and gold plated pension.
Sounds like we really need to rethink this massive perk about government jobs. Having a class of people with guaranteed employed for life with no accountability on performance or value they add, always seemed absolutely insane to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
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…
When you realise that any Government is ultimately a business, it's revenue is mostly tax, and its costs, are like any other business - salaries, then crappy salaries for Government employees makes more sense.
> So, £100k/year = bad, £120k/year via an external consultancy = good.
There's also the (implicit) argument that the (UK) Government is also not having to pay up a (Civil Service) pension scheme, private health (!!), and the consultancy is picking that up, so that's also 'good'.
Seriously how does a sane government official trust Palantir of all companies with their data.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> £100k/year = bad, £120k/year via an external consultancy = good actually kind of makes sense. The £600 a day is as long as you need it and can be stopped when you don't. A £100k government employee basically has a guaranteed job for life and gold plated pension.
> A £100k government employee basically has a guaranteed job for life and gold plated pension. Sounds like we really need to rethink this massive perk about government jobs. Having a class of people with guaranteed employed for life with no accountability on performance or value they add, always seemed absolutely insane to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You pay money to Palantir that money essentially escapes the economy, you develop a sovereign solution yes you pay millions even more but that goes into corporations and people actually living in the country, paying taxes and spending their coins here.
It doesn't escape the economy. This is the kind of bizarre left-wing isolationism/nationalism that seems to be rife amongst people who don't understand free markets. If you pay money to Palantir, they are providing a service in return. That service is investment in your own economy, you pay them and then you own the thing they produce. Money does not "escape", the same amount of money is there before and after. The r…
A free market is not a means to an end. Part of the reason that the USA was (until recently) doing so well was that the winner-takes-all mentality of the free-market benefits Silicon Valley, but that doesn't mean that other nation states have to submit to that philosophy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> £100k/year = bad, £120k/year via an external consultancy = good actually kind of makes sense. The £600 a day is as long as you need it and can be stopped when you don't. A £100k government employee basically has a guaranteed job for life and gold plated pension.
Sure. Because the government only needs a finite amount of software, and once it's written its more efficient to drop the people who wrote it.
> a guaranteed job for life
so the person will have to deal with all of their shit if they wrote crappy stuff. Obviously not the incentives we want.
> and gold plated pension.
because who wants people to be able to actually retire? Isn't it better to keep them working as greeters at Walmart?