1. they aim to deliver product company margins with a consulting-heavy model.
2. your software purchase funds a cadre of "free" FDEs and deployment strategists who customize your install, build a bunch of data pipes/transforms, and talk to people to figure out what all the data means.
This could be a good deal if your tech org is not very competent at integrating your data, or if you have a sudden, short-term need. In the longer term, it's probably cheaper and more effective to develop a competent tech team, modernize the source data systems, and roll your own integration -- but that also requires leaders with long-term vision who are resistant to external hype and pressure.
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.
reads like Salesforce to me, ugh! Enterprises are paying so much to blatantly vendor-lock in themselves using hundreds of "Salesforce engineers". It's baffling to me.
I owned Salesforce setup with 4 engineers and 500+ licenses. I don‘t see how could I replace our SF setup with an in-house product on the same budget within reasonable timeline. We won local competition within a few years, because our sales could use good CRM from day 1 and our competitor, according to the rumors I heard, could not calculate properly sales agent commission. Vendor lock-in is not always a stupid thing. Sometimes it‘s the bet that wins you a market.
1. Palantir isn't selling consulting as much as Palantir is selling the confidence you get from buying a name brand. It's the same as paying for McKinsey to provide justification to do what you already want to do.
2. Palantir actually has some good core tech. An in house team can probably do a better job just because the incentives are better aligned, but they'll be starting from behind and have to catch up.
3. LLMs aren't at a level to replace a team of FDEs. Maybe in a couple of years. The role requires too much understanding of the human systems, and too much initiative to keep the ball rolling/acknowledge and deal with real problems.
"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 department does day in and day out.
The output will be open source by default and use existing standards.
Hundreds of thousands of documents is small enough that you can feasibly run a pen and paper office handling them. Especially since most of them do not cross-reference eachother (family applications do, but unrelated families have no such links).
That America's brightest tech minds can't solve this problem is embarrassing. (Never mind the baggage of giving a foreign, potentially adversarial nation access to something as sensitive as residency and visa information.)
I assumed that when the GP said the UK was "giving a foreign, potentially adversarial nation access" the GP meant that the US is that "foreign, potentially adversarial nation"
I can't believe that in our timeline Europe has to think like this, but here we are.
There's not really enough info to know if this is just a coin toss or something more. "Company tries to roll its own system and [saves / loses] money" is just a common story, one way or the other.
For context, the Homes for Ukraine refugee scheme cost 2-3 billion as of 2023. I can't seem to find an updated cost. This cost (from the article) was Palantir working for free for the first 6 months (could they have beat that, time wise?), then awarded 4.5m and 5.5m for two more 12 month terms, and now they're transitioning to something home-grown instead.
> The MHCLG [
Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government] said it initially needed a system which could be ready within days but, in seeking a "steadier service", later created an updated platform to meet the programme's longer-term needs and bring down costs.
I basically agree with the MHCLG's reasoning here. It's always worth at least experimenting to see if you can roll your own.
> There's not really enough info to know if this is just a coin toss or something more.
The difference is always having one or two devs who care. Every successful software project I've ever seen has had a few devs who care way more than is healthy
http://archive.today/xgkiS
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.
Palantir is very expensive. This is because:
1. they aim to deliver product company margins with a consulting-heavy model.
2. your software purchase funds a cadre of "free" FDEs and deployment strategists who customize your install, build a bunch of data pipes/transforms, and talk to people to figure out what all the data means.
This could be a good deal if your tech org is not very competent at integrating your data, or if you have a sudden, short-term need. In the longer term, it's probably cheaper and more effective to develop a competent tech team, modernize the source data systems, and roll your own integration -- but that also requires leaders with long-term vision who are resistant to external hype and pressure.
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.
reads like Salesforce to me, ugh! Enterprises are paying so much to blatantly vendor-lock in themselves using hundreds of "Salesforce engineers". It's baffling to me.
I owned Salesforce setup with 4 engineers and 500+ licenses. I don‘t see how could I replace our SF setup with an in-house product on the same budget within reasonable timeline. We won local competition within a few years, because our sales could use good CRM from day 1 and our competitor, according to the rumors I heard, could not calculate properly sales agent commission. Vendor lock-in is not always a stupid thing. Sometimes it‘s the bet that wins you a market.
could palantir consulting be replaced by LLM in the hands of a half competent hacker?
Seriously what did LLMs replace or can replace? You are living in a world of dreams
No.
1. Palantir isn't selling consulting as much as Palantir is selling the confidence you get from buying a name brand. It's the same as paying for McKinsey to provide justification to do what you already want to do.
2. Palantir actually has some good core tech. An in house team can probably do a better job just because the incentives are better aligned, but they'll be starting from behind and have to catch up.
3. LLMs aren't at a level to replace a team of FDEs. Maybe in a couple of years. The role requires too much understanding of the human systems, and too much initiative to keep the ball rolling/acknowledge and deal with real problems.
Its much easier to replicate a thing that already exists and has had many sunk expenditures incurred.
No one got fired for buying ~IBM~ Palantir. (Well...)
"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 department does day in and day out.
The output will be open source by default and use existing standards.
Could probably be moderately complex excel sheet. Well, hopefully not but keeping that one guy that know how it works is still cheaper than Palantir!
They did that with the COVID19 tracker.
And ran out of rows
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54423988
Hundreds of thousands of documents is small enough that you can feasibly run a pen and paper office handling them. Especially since most of them do not cross-reference eachother (family applications do, but unrelated families have no such links).
That America's brightest tech minds can't solve this problem is embarrassing. (Never mind the baggage of giving a foreign, potentially adversarial nation access to something as sensitive as residency and visa information.)
This article is about the UK.
I assumed that when the GP said the UK was "giving a foreign, potentially adversarial nation access" the GP meant that the US is that "foreign, potentially adversarial nation"
I can't believe that in our timeline Europe has to think like this, but here we are.
I'm well aware.
Note that Palantir is an American company that failed to solve this problem well, and introduces an adversarial risk to the UK.
There's not really enough info to know if this is just a coin toss or something more. "Company tries to roll its own system and [saves / loses] money" is just a common story, one way or the other.
For context, the Homes for Ukraine refugee scheme cost 2-3 billion as of 2023. I can't seem to find an updated cost. This cost (from the article) was Palantir working for free for the first 6 months (could they have beat that, time wise?), then awarded 4.5m and 5.5m for two more 12 month terms, and now they're transitioning to something home-grown instead.
> The MHCLG [ Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government] said it initially needed a system which could be ready within days but, in seeking a "steadier service", later created an updated platform to meet the programme's longer-term needs and bring down costs.
I basically agree with the MHCLG's reasoning here. It's always worth at least experimenting to see if you can roll your own.
GDS has a framework that UK Gov departments have been following for some time to build sites with similar challenges to this for some time.
> There's not really enough info to know if this is just a coin toss or something more.
The difference is always having one or two devs who care. Every successful software project I've ever seen has had a few devs who care way more than is healthy
The MHCLG blog post that this article is reporting on is available here: https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2026/04/09/from-emergency-t...
I would imagine with AI generated software this kind of replacing off the shelf software with internally created software will only increase.
Palantir needs to be banned in every EU country. The UK would be wise to do the same.
I would never trust an openly MAGA company.
That "Press Release" they put out with echos of Nazi Germany should have been enough for anyone
Millions of pounds wasted by using Palantir tech in refugee system
(FTFY)