Thread by @allthecitizens

🚨BREAKING:

Department of Health (test & trace) rush to replace Adult Social Care dashboard software run by controversial US firm Palantir. After only using it for one year, they are shifting to an in-house model developed by BAE Systems.
THREAD:

A newly published contract from DHSC (T&T) reveals that, after only having installed the American analytical firm’s software in 2020, the department is now spending £100k to migrate an entirely new data-analytics platform designed to process Covid-19 data.
contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/notice/bc37a8e…

The dashboard itself, part of Palantir’s larger Covid-19 data-store work within the NHS, is aimed at combining “data from the Capacity Tracker and other sources, allowing critical data to be viewed in real time, at national, regional, and local levels”
gov.uk/government/pub…

The “Palantir migration”, contracted to tech outsourcing firm Mozaic Services, will move DHSC’s analytics capabilities over to a system called EDGE (Environment for Data Gathering and Engineering) - developed during the pandemic by defence contractor BAE Systems.

This raises questions about value for money in government buying into popular Big Tech solutions which then spiral in price after the initial trial.

Palantir’s first deal with the NHS was for £1, before they were later awarded a further £25m in a total of four contracts from NHS, and one from DHSC processing Test & Trace data.
digitalhealth.net/2020/12/palant…

This back-pedalling follows reports of concerns from NHS workers about access controls on Palantir’s management of the Covid-19 datastore, with NHS England researchers claiming they were denied seeing data from management and Palantir software controllers.
theregister.com/2021/07/05/pal…

There seems to be an urgency to the move away from Palantir. The Mosaic contract states “time is of the essence as the migration is to be completed by 30th September to avoid rolling into a further licence renewal”

NHS staff have also raised concerns that Palantir software wasn’t the best fit for the health service, mentioning that “they see little or no functionality in the Palantir Foundry platform that is not already available with open-source data warehousing and analytics tools.”

As @allthecitizens have reported on previously, Palantir are infamous for their controversial work supplying software to the defence and intelligence communities, and their relentless march into UK institutions saw a dramatic uptake in 2020:

https://twitter.com/allthecitizens/status/1421049223349477379?s=20

Having now been awarded at least £94m from the public purse since 2009, @OpenDemocracy recently reported that the company had made £22m in profit last year alone, following the NHS deals and despite making a financial loss the previous year.
opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-…

Now, after a legal battle against Palantir within the health service supported by @Foxglovelegal, @openDemocracy, @allthecitizens and others, it seems that the government is finally making good on its promise to "press pause" on further work:
foxglove.org.uk/2021/04/01/suc…

Catch the latest on this below:

https://twitter.com/foxglovelegal/status/1436317315415617579?s=21