Kudos to Palantir from the GAO
Last Updated on Wednesday, 9 December 2009 11:37 Written by Jeffreycarr Wednesday, 9 December 2009 11:37
This is probably as close as the General Accounting Office would ever come to endorsing a product (I’m guessing that they don’t give endorsements). Since I receive quite a few inquiries about whether or not Palantir is “really” that good of a product, I thought I’d reproduce this news as a way of sending my congratulations to all of the passionate, hard-working folks at Palantir Technologies. You guys have really earned this.
RATB Highly Successful at Overseeing Stimulus
The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board (RATB) oversees spending under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. At the center of the Board’s oversight efforts is the Recovery Operations Center (ROC). Recent reports have highlighted success stories at the ROC that emerged from advanced analytical software the Board’s staff of investigators uses.
The Government Accountability Office reports:
The Recovery Operations Center provides two core functions—predictive analytics and in-depth risk analysis….According to Board staff, the results provide oversight authorities with information to focus limited resources on cities, regions, and high-risk government programs where historical data and current trends suggest the likelihood of future risk.
The Board found success early on using the analysis software. Within two weeks the Board was running investigations into likely fraud based on the insights discovered through our in-depth analysis software. The GAO concluded:
“We believe the activities of the board, and in particular the predictive analysis effort, are a positive step in coordinating and marshaling the resources of the inspector general community to strengthen the oversight of federal spending.”
The story was picked up by Nextgov.com, which reported:
The technology analyzes expansive amounts of data on the recipients of Recovery Act funds to filter out relationships between communities, programs and contractors that past events indicate could present a risk of wrongdoing. The software synthesizes data from court and criminal records, news articles, previous agency audits, confidential law enforcement data and other public sources to uncover nonobvious relationships between parties.
Until the government bought the software in October, federal inspectors did not have a central system capable of connecting the dots between repeat instances of project mismanagement. “This is a big advance for the IG community,” said GAO Director John Needham.
Palantir is proud to be the analysis platform at the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board. Our advanced analysis platform enables in depth analysis and predictive resource allocation. This allows the community to leverage a unified view of data to investigate illicit activity where it occurs today and understand where it is likely to occur in the future.
See what else Palantir is doing in the oversight community and beyond:
- Preventing Fraud, Waste, and Abuse: http://www.palantirtech.com/government/videos/stim-reg
- Analyzing Mortgage Fraud: http://www.palantirtech.com/government/analysis-blog/mortgage-fraud
- Investigating Insider Trading: http://www.palantirtech.com/government/analysis-blog/sec-trader-oversight
- Analyze The US: https://AnalyzeThe.US – Try Palantir applied to Data.Gov from your PC right now
The GAO determines that the DoD is vulnerable to power disruptions on the commercial grid
Last Updated on Monday, 26 October 2009 09:56 Written by Jeffreycarr Monday, 26 October 2009 09:55
Not that we needed another reason to launch an investigation into the vulnerability of the electric grid, but here’s another reason for you:
DOD’s most critical assets are vulnerable to disruptions in electrical power supplies, but DOD lacks sufficient information to determine the full extent of the risks and vulnerabilities these assets face. All 34 of these most critical assets require electricity continuously to support their military missions, and 31 of them rely on commercial power grids–which the Defense Science Board Task Force on DOD Energy Strategy has characterized as increasingly fragile and vulnerable–as their primary source of electricity.
So 31 out of 34 of our nation’s most critical assets rely on a Grid controlled by private interests who cannot be trusted to provide accurate information about the state of their security.
You can download the public version of the report here, and a classified copy has also been prepared, according to the GAO.
The Friday Brief
Last Updated on Friday, 25 July 2008 09:17 Written by admin Friday, 25 July 2008 09:14
Here are a few intriguing links for your weekend reading. Enjoy!
Google: 1 Trillion Pages Served, er… Indexed.
A new debating site- OpposingViews – holds a lot of promise for those of us who appreciate informed debate.
If you’re done reading the DNI’s Vision 2015: A Globally Networked and Integrated Intelligence Enterprise then you might be interested in reading the GAO report on the Information Sharing Environment – “Definition of the Results to Be Achieved in Improving Terrorism-Related Information Sharing Is Needed to Guide Implementation and Assess Progress” (June 2008)
Inside Cyber Warfare
