Data Portability: NYPD vs. Palantir

by Krishan Patel | Dec 22, 2019 | Government, Technology

The concept of data portability is all too often simplified to the question “Can we have our data in a machine readable format?”

At best, this ensures the data can be loaded to a new system and at worst the data can be added to a data warehouse.

Palantir, Peter Thiels company, provides a lens into the importance of “thinking from the end” with systems — i.e. what happens what the system potentially reaches obsolescence or you simply want to leave it for whatever reason.

Can you get the data out?

And, can you output the analysis in machine readable format to continue the work in another system?

I assume most companies will not hand over queries as they could claim they are proprietary.

However, this complexity, clear provides the importance of creating in-house capabilities for analytics, and building in the end of contract clauses and what they actually mean into contracts. 

The department has created a new system to replace Palantir, and it wants to transfer the analysis generated by Palantir’s software to the new system. But Palantir, the NYPD claims, has not produced the full analysis in a standardized format — one that would work with the new software — despite multiple requests from the police department in recent months.

Big data helped New York’s cops bust Bobby Shmurda. But as the NYPD’s contract with tech giant Palantir comes to an end, things could get messy.
— Read on www.buzzfeednews.com/article/williamalden/theres-a-fight-brewing-between-the-nypd-and-silicon-valley