Thread by @allthecitizens

🔴NEW: NHS England awards Palantir an £11.5m extension of data platform services, without competition.

The contract is to extend ‘provision of the Foundry platform until 11th June 2023 to support the procurement of the new NHS Federated Data Platform’
#PalantirWatch

As first reported by @TheRegister, Palantir has been granted an extension, issued without tender, to the £23 million two-year agreement signed in 2020 - now to run for another year while the FDP procurement process is finalised.
theregister.com/2023/01/04/pal…

In the notice, NHSE state they are ‘committed to procuring the future provision and requires adequate time to do so’, adding ‘a change of contractor at this stage would cause significant inconvenience and have substantial duplication of cost implications’
contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/notice/2cf9dde…

The Federated Data Platform (FDP), a £360m deal still in the procurement phase, is seen as a “must-win” deal for Palantir, who are considered the favourites. This, despite Lord Kamall, then a minister at DHSC, stating in June 2022 that there was “no preferred bidder”.

However, as previously reported by @allthecitizens and @BylineTimes, the language of the contract, and the fact that the company is already engaged in elements of the work the FDP will cover, have for some time cast doubt on this:

https://twitter.com/allthecitizens/status/1542503604283576320?s=20&t=zit6gKWtqSqzsvxq8Twj9Q

The company has been notably preparing for an expansion in recent months as well, hiring NHS heads Indra Joshi, Harjeet Dhaliwal, and Paul Howells, as well as planning to establish a new UK base near NHS Digital HQ, as reported by Bloomberg:
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Palantir’s existing work within the health service, which began during the Covid-19 pandemic, is also known to be set to roll into the FDP, giving the company an unfair advantage, as NHS England documents revealed last November…
theregister.com/2022/11/04/uk_…

The govt is planning to use Palantir’s software to extract ‘patient-level identifiable data pertaining to admission, inpatient, discharge and outpatient activity’ daily, without patient consent or opt-out rights - in a pilot initiative, Faster Data Flows.
digitalhealth.net/2022/12/federa…

Speaking of the plans, campaigners warned that ‘NHS England may want to ignore people's opt-outs from Research & Planning uses, and contorts itself to say their data's not "confidential patient information" - the law(s) says otherwise.’

https://twitter.com/EinsteinsAttic/status/1587413103125311488?s=20&t=vWUyri2JL3aa9xr7H5Lofw

The Faster Data Flow pilot has already been subject to threat of judicial review, with campaigners citing the unsuitability of a company that cut its teeth building tech for police, immigration authorities, and the intelligence community working in health:

https://twitter.com/allthecitizens/status/1351153879002603522?s=20&t=vWUyri2JL3aa9xr7H5Lofw

@allthecitizens can also reveal that NHSE is also seeking ways to engage staff with Palantir more generally, posting contracts to ‘engage staff to interact with the Foundry data platform and generate excitement about the potential new ways of data usage’
contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/notice/5bfaad0…

With all roads seemingly pointing to Palantir to truly become the ‘operating system for the NHS’, doctors have called for greater scrutiny of bidders for the FDP contract, to ensure they have a positive track record on security, privacy, and ethics.
theregister.com/2022/11/25/fam…