[HN Gopher] Campaign launches to try to force Palantir out of Br...
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Campaign launches to try to force Palantir out of Britain's NHS
Author : alexrustic
Score : 163 points
Date : 2021-06-07 14:47 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| MikeDelta wrote:
| What can Palantir do that an NHS-internal team of data engineers
| and data scientists couldn't?
|
| Am I missing something?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| An alternative to a culture change?
| karl11 wrote:
| 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).
| rsj_hn wrote:
| 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.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Is Palantir good at this stuff, though? It sounds like they
| have a mixed track record on delivering value.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| 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.
| Symbiote wrote:
| > 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?
| pydry wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| https://www.opensafely.org/
|
| I disagree wholeheartedly
| Hallucinaut wrote:
| There was no bidding process. They were handed the contract
| because they said it was PS1. 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.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > What can Palantir do that an NHS-internal team of data
| engineers and data scientists couldn'
|
| Earn money for Peter Thiel?
| joelschw wrote:
| It's a platform play where pipelines would be built and
| maintained
| michaelt wrote:
| 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.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Charge a lot of money?
| stuaxo wrote:
| Sell data to intelligence agencies around the world.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > 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
| RGamma wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| What two parts are those?
| londons_explore wrote:
| NHS is government. Government (with a _very_ few exceptions)
| doesn 't have the skill or people who can do big IT projects.
| dijit wrote:
| 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.
| simiones wrote:
| Not if they keep hiring companies instead of people, of
| course.
| fiftyacorn wrote:
| There are a lot of successful government projects, especially
| those not involving the big consultancies
| nicoburns wrote:
| They could if they were willing to spend even a fraction of
| what they pay companies like Palantir on wages.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| 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.
| sleavey wrote:
| Isn't this subject to GDPR (which is still UK law as far as I
| know), thus requiring explicit consent?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| No, because Palantir isn't actually collecting any data.
| They're building data visualization and interaction software
| for the NHS. The data stays in the hands of the NHS.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| See also the forthcoming deadline (June 23rd) for opting out from
| having all your data irretrievably slurped by the likes of
| palantir: https://medconfidential.org/how-to-opt-out/
| harryvederci wrote:
| Thank you very much. I'm disgusted by the fact that I have to
| find out about this through a comment on HN instead of by
| getting a letter in the mail. Double-u Tee Eff.
|
| Edit: looks like it's England only, but I'm going to make a
| wild guess and say they didn't get a letter either. Which
| should have been an _opt in_ thing, by the way!
| pydry wrote:
| The UK media is basically as servile to
| government/establishment interests as the US media these
| days.
| mywittyname wrote:
| My understanding is that they've always been that way. Not
| so much in a direct, commanding sense, but more of a hire
| and promote people who are "good fits" (read: groupthink).
| QasimK wrote:
| Incredible. I somehow heard about the NHS opt-out, but not
| about the GP one. I'm appalled by how much disregard the
| government has for sensitive personal medical information.
|
| I personally believe it's a question of when, not if, the
| country-wide database is hacked or leaked.
| zh3 wrote:
| Yes, we're going through the process now. It's really difficult
| and appears to me to be deliberately obfuscated - the "opt out"
| on the NHS website is _not_ the one you want, instead you want
| the form which you have to send to your local GP. And it 's
| extra effort if you have children (make sure you understand the
| difference between type 1 and type 2 optouts, oh "and by the
| way the types changed and we're automatically converting the
| records for historical reasons").
|
| Plus 'nudge' tactics are out to play in full force - I
| particularly dislike the pre-emptive strike at social media
| implying information there would be false despite there not
| actually being anything on there at the time (I say this as
| someone who loathes Facebook et al with a passion).
|
| I guess there's a lot of money at stake (there's gold in them
| thar personal medical records).
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| Its ominous that Palantir is openly political, its political
| goals would be advanced by a collapse of the NHS, and they are
| being put in charge of critical NHS functions.
| gopiandcode wrote:
| I have been consistently appalled by the NHS' willingness to
| collaborate so freely with data-mining privacy-violating american
| companies (google, palantir).
|
| Did the UK public consent to having their personal data shared to
| unaccountable foreign companies? I know I didn't.
| Glavnokoman wrote:
| Any campaign/initiative which does not allow to vote
| against/dontcare but only counts the voices for is a bullshit.
| There are so many people around you can get a solid army of
| supporters literally for anything. Especially if the topic
| attracts some very vocal groups.
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(page generated 2021-06-07 23:02 UTC)