Piousbox

From BBC. 

Millions of pounds have been saved by replacing a Palantir IT system which helps to find homes for Ukrainian refugees with one built by its own experts, a government department has said.

The Homes for Ukraine scheme matched people fleeing the conflict with offers of accommodation - a complex task Palantir initially supported for free but which grew to cost millions.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) said its new system was "more flexible" and could meet "high standards" of security.

Palantir said it was proud to have supported the scheme and "stood up a solution in just nine days, which enabled the safe resettlement of more than 157,000 refugees".

Homes for Ukraine was set up in in March 2022, less than a month after Russia's full scale invasion.

Through a website, backed by an IT system, those who had a rent-free space in their home or a separate residence could to offer it to refugees.

In order to set this up quickly, then-Conservative government ministers accepted an offer from Palantir to build a system to administrate the scheme, based on its Foundry platform, for free for six months.

In a 2023 blog post, 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.

Subsequent 12-month contracts were awarded - one worth £4.5m and another £5.5m, according to a National Audit Office report.

The report notes the Government's chief commercial officer informed Palantir of his concern about the firm's practice of offering a zero- or nominal-cost initial offer to gain a commercial foothold.

This, he argued, was contrary to public procurement principles requiring open competition.

Palantir maintains government guidance suggests running pilots of systems and asking if they can be supplied for free.

The NAO report also said there was a desire to replace the Palantir system.