6 ms·

What can Palantir do that an NHS-internal team of data engineers and data scientists couldn't? Am I missing something?

MattGaiser 5y ago
An alternative to a culture change?
rsj_hn 5y ago
Yeah, I think you are missing that the NHS, as an organization, is not good at designing, delivering, and maintaining large software platforms, which is what Palantir is good at. This is not an insult to the NHS. How on earth could they become good at something like that given that it is a healthcare system? They are also not good at maintaining cellular towers, water treatment, hospital construction, manufacturing their own uniforms, or their own medical equipment. So they pay other firms to provide these products to them rather than trying to adopt an autarky-based model. Now you could argue that they should have hired another vendor, but without knowing specifics about the bidding process and which other vendors were competing, you are not really in a position to say that this particular vendor wasn't the best for the job.
- pydry 5y ago
  >Now you could argue that they should have hired another vendor, but without knowing specifics about the bidding process and which other vendors were competing, you are not really in a position to say that this particular vendor wasn't the best for the job. You're saying that because of the lack of transparency in the bidding process when it was shoved through "as a COVID emergency" we're not in a particular position to say that this vendor wasn't best for the job? Maybe you are correct. Maybe we just need more faith in the vendor selection honesty of a government that recently contracted the services of a ferry company that didn't own any actual ferries.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    > You're saying that because of the lack of transparency in the bidding process No, I am not saying that at all. Please cite where I said that there was a lack of transparency. I only said that the parent poster would need information in order to make a case, and without that information no case could be made. I have no idea how transparent the process was and whether the relevant oversight controls were properly enforced, nor did I make any claims or assumptions about that, although it sounds like you have some assumptions of your own. If so, please back them up -- if you think there was impropriety in the bidding process, then again some evidence is called for.
    - lordnacho 5y ago
      Have a Google for "Matt Hancock's neighbour" or "Dido Harding". It's not unknown that there are some questions about UK procurement that need answering.
    - pydry 5y ago
      >Please cite where I said that there was a lack of transparency This: >without knowing specifics about the bidding process Something we don't know because of the lack of transparency, which is (partly) why OpenDemocracy raised a lawsuit. What would you be referring to if not that?
- spamizbad 5y ago
  Is Palantir good at this stuff, though? It sounds like they have a mixed track record on delivering value.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    Why do you think that? I know there are a lot of people on the left who hate palantir because law enforcement is one of the sectors they work in, but I don't see how political animosity translates into them not being able to deliver value better than competitors.
    - sealeck 5y ago
      This isn't a great take; the fact that Palantir makes technology to racially profile people should mean that the company cannot deliver technology to fulfil the NHS's mission of equity in care "from the cradle to the grave." Additionally, even if Palantir was, not allowing them a contract would be a good sanction to encourage them to write software that treats all people with dignity and respect.
  - austhrow743 5y ago
    Is there any enterprise grade software contracting firm that have a great track record? It's a difficult space.
- Symbiote 5y ago
  > the NHS, as an organization, is not good at designing, delivering, and maintaining large software platforms, which is what Palantir is good at. Has it ever had the opportunity to try? Many projects to funnel government money into private companies have not delivered results. Has a large, in-house NHS IT project failed?
  - sealeck 5y ago
    Um, yes, but that's not to say that they can't run a better one.
- CraigJPerry 5y ago
  https://www.opensafely.org/ https://www.opensafely.org/ I disagree wholeheartedly
- Hallucinaut 5y ago
  There was no bidding process. They were handed the contract because they said it was £1. Several months later, that price was in the millions. Several months later they had a competition and with no time to handover what had been done, guess who won again? The GCloud contracts were released following FOI requests.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  Actually, you are. Making Palantir responsible for the privacy of medical records is like making a fox responsible for the henhouse. It's the opposite of a good idea.
bigbillheck 5y ago
> What can Palantir do that an NHS-internal team of data engineers and data scientists couldn' Earn money for Peter Thiel?
RGamma 5y ago
Many unknown unknowns are at play. Here's my heuristic: anything Thiel has his fingers in can only be opposed to the public good.
- throwkeep 5y ago
  Thiel isn't at all the cartoon villain he's made out to be. That's just lazy partisan propaganda. Read his book "Zero to One" or watch a few of his interviews for a nuanced perspective.
  - BBC-vs-neolibs 5y ago
    What two parts are those?
  - sealeck 5y ago
    No, he's worse.
joelschw 5y ago
It's a platform play where pipelines would be built and maintained
nicoburns 5y ago
Charge a lot of money?
stuaxo 5y ago
Sell data to intelligence agencies around the world.
mschuster91 5y ago
> Am I missing something? There's a lot of possibilities at play: - government entities usually are restricted in paying the salary needed to hire actual experts, meaning they either get bullshitters or have to go for expensive consultants like Palantir, Accidenture and the likes - alternatively (but with the same end result) government HR lacks the expertise to properly evaluate experts, the home education market does not produce the required experts - digital illiterates in upper management don't want to hire a team of actual experts for what they deem a one-off job - Europe has strong worker protection laws, remember that - without even thinking a step further - a lack of trust in the organization - an outside impartial agency given full authority for any access they want by top leadership will face way less resistance from individual data silo leaders, compared to an in-house team - the obviously shady/illegal (and for the record, I'm not accusing anyone of anything here either, just throwing possibilities around) like kickbacks, campaign donations and other forms of "government influencing" - the extremely shady stuff - secret services cooperating behind closed doors to get data they would normally being forbidden from accessing by law, by using Palantir as some sort of proxy
karl11 5y ago
Nothing, they provide the software for the data engineers and data scientists to use. It seems that the vast majority of people that have heard of Palantir totally misunderstand what the company actually sells (a software platform) and what they do not sell (data).
michaelt 5y ago
I've got several family members who work for the NHS, in back office roles. At many hospitals employees have to bring in their own milk and coffee; and that they are not permitted a second screen, even if they pay for it themselves. I can't imagine it's easy to recruit an internal team of data engineers with such austere working conditions.
londons_explore 5y ago
NHS is government. Government (with a very few exceptions) doesn't have the skill or people who can do big IT projects.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  They could if they were willing to spend even a fraction of what they pay companies like Palantir on wages.
- dijit 5y ago
  GDS (also British Government) is at least one proven tech that came from Government to large acclaim. But there is also: GCHQ and NSA which are definitely government funded and are some of the most sophisticated digital terror (by their own definition) organisations.
- fiftyacorn 5y ago
  There are a lot of successful government projects, especially those not involving the big consultancies
- simiones 5y ago
  Not if they keep hiring companies instead of people, of course.
robertlagrant 5y ago
The NHS is a complex beast that's good at training and paying medical personnel, negotiating drug buys and running hospitals, and it's also actually about 150 mini empires rather than one big thing. None of that is particularly conducive to large scale data analysis.

An alternative to a culture change?

Yeah, I think you are missing that the NHS, as an organization, is not good at designing, delivering, and maintaining large software platforms, which is what Palantir is good at. This is not an insult to the NHS. How on earth could they become good at something like that given that it is a healthcare system? They are also not good at maintaining cellular towers, water treatment, hospital construction, manufacturing their own uniforms, or their own medical equipment. So they pay other firms to provide these products to them rather than trying to adopt an autarky-based model. Now you could argue that they should have hired another vendor, but without knowing specifics about the bidding process and which other vendors were competing, you are not really in a position to say that this particular vendor wasn't the best for the job.

pydry 5y ago
>Now you could argue that they should have hired another vendor, but without knowing specifics about the bidding process and which other vendors were competing, you are not really in a position to say that this particular vendor wasn't the best for the job. You're saying that because of the lack of transparency in the bidding process when it was shoved through "as a COVID emergency" we're not in a particular position to say that this vendor wasn't best for the job? Maybe you are correct. Maybe we just need more faith in the vendor selection honesty of a government that recently contracted the services of a ferry company that didn't own any actual ferries.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  > You're saying that because of the lack of transparency in the bidding process No, I am not saying that at all. Please cite where I said that there was a lack of transparency. I only said that the parent poster would need information in order to make a case, and without that information no case could be made. I have no idea how transparent the process was and whether the relevant oversight controls were properly enforced, nor did I make any claims or assumptions about that, although it sounds like you have some assumptions of your own. If so, please back them up -- if you think there was impropriety in the bidding process, then again some evidence is called for.
  - lordnacho 5y ago
    Have a Google for "Matt Hancock's neighbour" or "Dido Harding". It's not unknown that there are some questions about UK procurement that need answering.
  - pydry 5y ago
    >Please cite where I said that there was a lack of transparency This: >without knowing specifics about the bidding process Something we don't know because of the lack of transparency, which is (partly) why OpenDemocracy raised a lawsuit. What would you be referring to if not that?
spamizbad 5y ago
Is Palantir good at this stuff, though? It sounds like they have a mixed track record on delivering value.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  Why do you think that? I know there are a lot of people on the left who hate palantir because law enforcement is one of the sectors they work in, but I don't see how political animosity translates into them not being able to deliver value better than competitors.
  - sealeck 5y ago
    This isn't a great take; the fact that Palantir makes technology to racially profile people should mean that the company cannot deliver technology to fulfil the NHS's mission of equity in care "from the cradle to the grave." Additionally, even if Palantir was, not allowing them a contract would be a good sanction to encourage them to write software that treats all people with dignity and respect.
- austhrow743 5y ago
  Is there any enterprise grade software contracting firm that have a great track record? It's a difficult space.
Symbiote 5y ago
> the NHS, as an organization, is not good at designing, delivering, and maintaining large software platforms, which is what Palantir is good at. Has it ever had the opportunity to try? Many projects to funnel government money into private companies have not delivered results. Has a large, in-house NHS IT project failed?
- sealeck 5y ago
  Um, yes, but that's not to say that they can't run a better one.
CraigJPerry 5y ago
https://www.opensafely.org/ https://www.opensafely.org/ I disagree wholeheartedly
Hallucinaut 5y ago
There was no bidding process. They were handed the contract because they said it was £1. Several months later, that price was in the millions. Several months later they had a competition and with no time to handover what had been done, guess who won again? The GCloud contracts were released following FOI requests.
denton-scratch 5y ago
Actually, you are. Making Palantir responsible for the privacy of medical records is like making a fox responsible for the henhouse. It's the opposite of a good idea.

bigbillheck 5y ago

> What can Palantir do that an NHS-internal team of data engineers and data scientists couldn' Earn money for Peter Thiel?

RGamma 5y ago

Many unknown unknowns are at play. Here's my heuristic: anything Thiel has his fingers in can only be opposed to the public good.

throwkeep 5y ago
Thiel isn't at all the cartoon villain he's made out to be. That's just lazy partisan propaganda. Read his book "Zero to One" or watch a few of his interviews for a nuanced perspective.
- BBC-vs-neolibs 5y ago
  What two parts are those?
- sealeck 5y ago
  No, he's worse.

joelschw 5y ago

It's a platform play where pipelines would be built and maintained

nicoburns 5y ago

Charge a lot of money?

stuaxo 5y ago

Sell data to intelligence agencies around the world.

mschuster91 5y ago

> Am I missing something? There's a lot of possibilities at play: - government entities usually are restricted in paying the salary needed to hire actual experts, meaning they either get bullshitters or have to go for expensive consultants like Palantir, Accidenture and the likes - alternatively (but with the same end result) government HR lacks the expertise to properly evaluate experts, the home education market does not produce the required experts - digital illiterates in upper management don't want to hire a team of actual experts for what they deem a one-off job - Europe has strong worker protection laws, remember that - without even thinking a step further - a lack of trust in the organization - an outside impartial agency given full authority for any access they want by top leadership will face way less resistance from individual data silo leaders, compared to an in-house team - the obviously shady/illegal (and for the record, I'm not accusing anyone of anything here either, just throwing possibilities around) like kickbacks, campaign donations and other forms of "government influencing" - the extremely shady stuff - secret services cooperating behind closed doors to get data they would normally being forbidden from accessing by law, by using Palantir as some sort of proxy

karl11 5y ago

Nothing, they provide the software for the data engineers and data scientists to use. It seems that the vast majority of people that have heard of Palantir totally misunderstand what the company actually sells (a software platform) and what they do not sell (data).

michaelt 5y ago

I've got several family members who work for the NHS, in back office roles. At many hospitals employees have to bring in their own milk and coffee; and that they are not permitted a second screen, even if they pay for it themselves. I can't imagine it's easy to recruit an internal team of data engineers with such austere working conditions.

londons_explore 5y ago

NHS is government. Government (with a very few exceptions) doesn't have the skill or people who can do big IT projects.

nicoburns 5y ago
They could if they were willing to spend even a fraction of what they pay companies like Palantir on wages.
dijit 5y ago
GDS (also British Government) is at least one proven tech that came from Government to large acclaim. But there is also: GCHQ and NSA which are definitely government funded and are some of the most sophisticated digital terror (by their own definition) organisations.
fiftyacorn 5y ago
There are a lot of successful government projects, especially those not involving the big consultancies
simiones 5y ago
Not if they keep hiring companies instead of people, of course.

robertlagrant 5y ago

The NHS is a complex beast that's good at training and paying medical personnel, negotiating drug buys and running hospitals, and it's also actually about 150 mini empires rather than one big thing. None of that is particularly conducive to large scale data analysis.