Palantir Government is a product w
e have been working with for some time here at LMN Solutions. Overall it is a great product full of features to aid in investigating events and people. Because of its power and many features it can be hard to learn and applied to situations where it does not fit.
e have been working with for some time here at LMN Solutions. Overall it is a great product full of features to aid in investigating events and people. Because of its power and many features it can be hard to learn and applied to situations where it does not fit.Palantir Government has been used to investigate a cyber attack and many other events. It has an visually stimulating interface. It is centered around three types of objects - documents, entities and events. Each of these are sub divided into other groupings like meetings, bombings, cleric, government officials and so on. Each of these objects can have hundreds of properties such as name, address, longitude, latitude, date, birth date and any other type of data you can think of. It is easy to get lost in the details.
To make it possible there is a good amount of human effort involved to really make Palantir shine. The people using it and the IT folks supporting and loading it with data need to focus on learning how to make it work best for their particular group. Once you get the right data into it and then learn how to filter and search through data the linkages it can build are amazing. It is a "connect the dots" technology.
But it requires patience and time to iterate through the learning process to get the data into the right form and loaded into the system. It takes an experienced staff to really think deep about the ontology needed and how the goal of your group fits into it. It takes an experienced administrators to manage the Oracle database and the other Palantir servers. Experienced personnel to convert data from other systems into rich objects that Palantir loves can also aid the process.
Sometimes it is necessary to remove data from the system or change the object structure or ontology to help the end user, the analyst, work faster. Sometimes too much data can muddy the picture and perhaps slow the system. It takes strong communication with the analyst to figure out what needs to be done. We recommend a collaborative effort. Get the IT folks supporting Palantir right down to the analysts desk.
One of the keys to a successful implementation of Palantir Government is to define the goal. You must not just start ingesting the entire contents of all of the data repositories you have access to. It takes a lot of thought and preparation. Then do not give up, keep trying to add focused data sets that will strengthen the links between events, people and documents. Much of it comes down to old fashioned investigation and slowly building the data to link things together. At times it can just be boring data entry and tagging of do
cuments. At least Palantir makes taging of documents easy.
Palantir Government makes finding linkages between people, places, events and documents easier but investigative work is never easy. It is vital to put in the time to learn the tools that will help find what you are looking for. Palantir has a excellent free training game called Operation Tradestop. It really helps you learn how the search tools work on data from actual events and people.
cuments. At least Palantir makes taging of documents easy.Palantir Government makes finding linkages between people, places, events and documents easier but investigative work is never easy. It is vital to put in the time to learn the tools that will help find what you are looking for. Palantir has a excellent free training game called Operation Tradestop. It really helps you learn how the search tools work on data from actual events and people.
Palantir supports the use of custom helpers written in Java. They can be deployed right into the Palantir desktop. These are mini applications within Palantir that add additional functionality. With the use of helpers the tasks of analysts can be focused right to the tools they need without having to worry about all of the other features Palantir offers.
LMN Solutions has built a series of Palantir Government Helpers that aid in focusing the tasks of data entry and making sure the analyst does not get lost in a sea of properties.
- Jabber Helper - real time communication within the Palantir window. Send Palantir objects straight to a colleagues Palantir graph. Collaborate with colleagues that do not have Palantir
- Tasking Helper with work flow coordination. Assign Palantir documents to others and manage tasking.
- Link Builder Tool - drag and drop interface to quickly build linkages between objects.
Overall Palantir Government is a useful tool, just be ready to put in the effort to narrow the focus of your task and spend the time needed to fully understand and learn the product. Palantir is not a panacea. One cannot just force all of the data and documents into in and expect it to magically determine the linkages between people, events, places and documents. If you can put the necessary time to see it through Palantir will yield results.
Come visit our booth at the Palantir Government Conference GovCon4 October 13, 2009
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