Palantir suggests 'common operating system' for UK govt data
theregister.com
theregister.com
It's also true that Palantir should be nowhere near this, both from an infosec perspective and a "why do we keep giving money to US companies?" perspective.
I've thought quite a lot about how to establish key software infrastructure in the UK, particularly regarding EHRs. Has anyone else (Louis Mosley no need to respond)? How do we do it? What challenges/benefits did you spot?
Palantir are operating nationally, and have the government’s ear, as does delloitte. They also have the expertise, time and motivation to write out a plan for making things better, rather than local firefighting.
After all, who are you going to listen to? one single admin in a trust somewhere, or a very large data company who you've paid lots of money to do all this stuff?
Now you have trusts cut in size creating incentives against cooperation if only because of how funding is going to be arranged, and even if there's centralised service like NHS Digital... it's not the entity that is going to fight for budget for trust-local employee training and support needs.
It isn't but also people have been saying this kind of thing for years and it just doesn't get anywhere or make the news.
e.g. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmpu... from 2006 is all about « The National Programme for IT in the NHS (“the Programme” or NPfIT) was set up to provide such services, using centrally managed procurement to provide impetus to the uptake of IT and to secure economies of scale." »
That programme definitely made the news because it was a ludicrously expensive disaster. Some useful things came out of it (e.g. better hardware and bandwidth for trusts) but so much money was wasted. It's one of the UK's most famous failures.
It's good you bring it up, though.
So they deliberately sharded the contract and so there was endless bureaucracy and politics and blame-gaming between the companies who are normally competing against each other for work and so on.
It's kinda interesting really. I don't think it would have gone much better if a single company did everything as the often seems to be a clusterfuck regardless (example: post office horizon system)... Then you look at a big company like meta or Google and they're churning out systems that pretty much work and at huge scale.. are the people incompetent at consulting companies? Are the customers incompetent? Perhaps there are a million legacy dependencies that needs to be dealt with (but that is true with meta etc al too).
Interesting interesting. I know freelancers whose line of work is basically to get contracted in while Fujitsu or Accenture or IBM or whoever is there doing work, and basically just try to stop them pulling the wool over the eyes of the clients. Their whole careers have basically been calling bullshit on consultants.
They are but they also have a margin for breakage that, e.g., the NHS doesn't really have. If your Facebook or Instagram feed is missing everything from the last 3 days because a node went down, they can fill that in with other stuff and you might not even notice. Same with stuff missing from Google Search, etc. If stuff is missing from your medical notes because a node went down, that could be fatal if you're just about to have a procedure done. Same with, e.g., tax records, police records, etc.
I guess financial institutions are the better option (but again they still have a bunch of "reconcile stuff at the end of the day" options that don't necessarily translate to the NHS et al.)
We do need to make things more efficient. But it's lazy of us tech types to fall for centralisation in its most naive form — centralisation of personal data storage always comes with huge risks. We overstate the benefits, and we're not around to pay the price when the benefits fail to pass and the hidden costs creep out.
Instead, we should be pushing the health record out to individuals, and away from the centre. We should own our own data — perhaps it should even reside on our own device. Our governments should be pushing to store less data, not more.
One of my observations was that trusts think the opposite. I was in a call with one, and I said at one point, "Of course, the patient is the Data Owner" and I was corrected by a trust staff member who said, "No, the trust is the Data Owner".
Because - as I learned and saw later - trusts will sell data for studies. So they want the data.
I thought you may mean that the legal rights provide protection, so one need not worry until deidentification or detachment. Maybe your emphasis was same.
But for clarity, I think we need to worry long before deidentification and detachment — basically the Trusts are not to be trusted, and our legal rights will vanish in a heartbeat.
Mere months later, the service contract is won by the neighbouring trust. Their standard system is, of course, software A!
Migration happened in reverse, but without budget to move historical records back over. Staff were left scrabbling around manually copying data for current cases from one system to the other…
What is a US company, and what is the disadvantage for UK people that money is paid to a US company rather than a UK company?
Are you arguing for protectionist tariffs to support local wages?
There's a remarkable lack of trust over here now with regards to U.S. companies.
Its replacement is on the table between US<->EU, and, hilariously, here is Nick Clegg (yes, that Nick Clegg) from Meta talking about it:
> the deal “will provide invaluable certainty for American & European companies of all sizes, including Meta, who rely on transferring data quickly and safely.”
I don't know of any news for US<->UK data agreements, but I haven't been keeping track.
The financial purpose is to create a J curve with income. Lose a bit or money first, then charge monopoly prices.
I don't like Palantir at all. Anecdote: I got drugged without consent _twice_ while employed there. The first time was minor but the second time hurt me and I'm still hurt from it. I can only guess but I think I got dosed with a large amount of Adderal or meth. I quit after that. I wanted to get authorities involved, but Palantir contracted for them, so I didn't out of fear.
This being said, if you're a UK employee and think this is a good idea: you're about to get screwed out of a lot of money long term. And you won't be able to leave because Palantir's tactic is to be as sticky as possible.
A government agency employs normal average developers etc.
They offer non-stellar wages in an economical backwater so has quite a boost on the local economy and gives programmers wanting to live more rurally employment opportunities, but I imagine today a lot could be remote too.
And it works great. No thrills but functional. Excellent value for money.
(The uk's gov.uk websites that I've had to interact with have a similar look and feel if a less integrated feeling; I don't know how they are developed.)
I've seen and known the the outsourced contractor systems in normal companies from the big names and all have always been an unending disaster. The goal is to 'grow the engagement' not finish. The incentives that keep it going in normal companies are not really about getting a good system quickly.
I actually once knew some programmers who worked there, so know its in-house etc, but don't remember exactly what it is called etc.
A quick google found this, hope it is the right thing and helpful https://www.government.se/government-agencies/the-agency-for...
They focused a lot on UX. For example, they avoid dropdowns - "the select component should only be used as a last resort in public-facing services because research shows that some users find selects very difficult to use." [Source](https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/select/).
It's worth reading their design principles: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/government-design-principles
If we had (user) research driven policy the way the digital departments build software, the country would look very different.
Not saying they are perfect institutions but on the whole the departmental digitisation efforts are run quite well within the constraints they have.
I have had many meetings with Government back-end and dev staff and they all seemed knowledgeable, rational, non-beaurecratic and keen to listen as much as talk. They are also accessible and helpful.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/25/stunning-signa...
If you ask anyone who has worked for these bastards (I have worked at several similar companies) they NEVER actually do the project correctly and there are a million different reasons why something which should be simple should take a million years.
All of these type of things can be done in the open without Palantir involved at all for next to no money.
Once you've done that, sure, you could get ChatGPT to make dashboards, some text resembling API documentation, etc; but that's the easy part: a few hours' work from conception to production, or a few minutes' work if you only need a proof-of-concept.
Plenty of people on UK and Europe thought that putting full trust in Palantir was a terrible idea, 6 months or 18 months or more ago. I agree that the temperature on this has risen a lot recently, but the concern is longstanding.
example from 2020: https://www.openrightsgroup.org/press-releases/nhs-must-expl...
And the new awareness will be similar
https://www.eurasiantimes.com/another-country-regrets-f-35-p...
It's debatable which is more dangerous. Warplanes or lack of air defence poses one risk in a hot war, surveillance data poses a different risk but is in the background all the time.
There's also the fact that most people in leadership are not great with IT and appear to be easily sold to.
I wonder if Palantir is over shooting here. The European (and UK) nations are clearly reconsidering any investments with US companies.
https://docs.publishing.service.gov.uk/manual/conventions-fo...
Are there other examples of governments mandating the use of specific technologies?
I think it is quite normal for individual sites to enforce a tech stack for their own site. gov.uk is quite huge - all sorts of things from passport applications, tax returns, car licensing and so on.
Just check out their website and let me know if you feel the same...
However, I can't find any examples of what they really do or what kind of product they offer. I've watched multiple videos about Palantir including many interviews with Alex Karp. But I still can't figure out exactly what they do and how their products/services would help us at work.
IOW I have yet to see anything that makes them look like more than your average data-centric service company. Pretty sure they're a normal business with a fairly typical offering that's been hyped so people in decision-making positions think it's Magic Sauce. Like a lot of companies that get talked about on HN, actually.
How is that PE ratio justified? I just cant wrap my mind around it.
And all the battleground tech they seem to offer? Good fucking luck selling it to any NATO country now.
They offer Apollo <https://www.palantir.com/docs/apollo/core/overview/#apollo-a...> as part of their FedStart program, although their docs aren't sales-y enough for drive-by understanding of what it does. They had a demo-day video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kSGlg8d5mI?t=622> that is still too "blah, blah, words" but at least shows some of the UI
As compared to Argo et al, I'll say it's pretty slick, but it is unquestionably very "do things the Palantir way" and thus even as slick as it is I don't think it's appropriate for just any ole random startup. It's also evidently just recently been exposed outside of Palantir so it definitely is v0.0.00000009-alpha when trying to use it in anger