SBA launches ‘new phase’ of partnership with Palantir on anti-fraud efforts

The Small Business Administration is ramping up its relationship with Palantir, announcing a “new phase” in its anti-fraud work with the data analytics and software giant. In a press release Tuesday, the SBA said it’s formalizing and expanding its work with Palantir after signing a $300,000 contract in January for a fraud prevention pilot and bootcamp. That deal had a projected end date of April 4, but the agency said in the release that the “collaboration” with Palantir will now continue through “ongoing efforts to identify, investigate, and help prosecute fraud in pandemic-era small business relief programs.” The agency pointed specifically to its Paycheck Protection Program and COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan program as areas previously beset by fraud. SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler said in a statement that the Palantir partnership “will strengthen our ability to expose fraudulent actors, support criminal enforcement actions, and recover stolen funds with advanced technology and artificial intelligence.” “No amount of fraud is acceptable — whether it is $10,000 or $10 million — which is why the SBA is deploying these tools to accelerate our work to surface wrongdoing and ensure those who cheated taxpayer-funded programs face consequences,” she added.

The National Institutes of Health selected Kristen Honey, a longtime government data and technology official, to head up its coordination of public-private research partnerships. In a social media post, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT announced Honey as the inaugural official in the NIH role. As part of her duties, Honey will help “to build robust partnership models, reduce duplication, improve transparency, and move promising ideas from concept to execution with greater speed and consistency in collaboration with” ONC and across the department, per the post. The chief partnerships officer role is housed in the Office of the Director’s Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives, per the post. “The ‘wicked problems’ that I run toward—complex, interdisciplinary challenges no one wants to own and that require cross-sector solutions—just got bigger. Joining NIH as Chief Partnerships Officer,” Honey said in a LinkedIn post. Honey has served in various HHS and White House roles over the past decade — including as HHS’s chief data officer. Honey was initially installed as CDO after President Joe Biden’s administration reorganization of its IT, data and artificial intelligence portfolio. Her time as CDO, however, appears to have ended after the Trump administration undid that reorganization in March, per her LinkedIn. Since then, she has listed her role as senior executive service. Currently, Arman Sharma, HHS’s deputy chief AI officer, is listed as the agency’s top data official on the CDO Council webpage.

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