
The failed rollout of Britain's covid-19 app were the result of clear errors - kjakm
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/19/1004190/uk-covid-contact-tracing-app-fiasco/
======
SeanDav
This is small potatoes. When the UK government really puts its mind to it, it
can screw up far more royally:

How about 10 - 12 billion GBP (depending on who you ask) for a National Health
Service computer system _that never worked and was never delivered_.

[https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-
records-...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records-
system-10bn)

[https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-
families...](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-
families/health-news/nhs-pulls-the-plug-on-its-11bn-it-system-2330906.html)

[https://www.henricodolfing.com/2019/01/case-
study-10-billion...](https://www.henricodolfing.com/2019/01/case-
study-10-billion-it-disaster.html)

------
rjmunro
Finally an article that doesn't just say "Centralised bad, decentralised good,
because Apple / Google say so", but actually explains the advantages of the
centralised model.

I agree that it's probably not worth the privacy trade offs, but I don't think
it's as absolutely clear cut as most of my filter bubble seems to think.

~~~
IneffablePigeon
I completely agree - I came into it against the centralised model on principle
but after reading their whitepaper I actually think the benefits may slightly
outweigh the negatives.

The app has to actually work for a high enough proportion fo cases, though.

~~~
ethbro
Centralized models would be more palatable if the keys to the kingdom were
stored with an NGO.

There's too much temptation for governments with poor privacy track records
(and that's where they're even trying) to stick their hands in the cookie jar
for other purposes.

~~~
adrianN
If the government wants the data, an NGO offers almost no protection. The only
safe choice is not to collect the data in the first place.

~~~
ethbro
An NGO offers substantially _more_ protection than a direct government store.

Whether that is enough protection is a fair debate.

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pgt
I'd love to watch a "Disaster Class" instead of a "Master Class" on a variety
of topics. The learnings about what went wrong are often more valuable than
about what went right.

~~~
tobylane
BBC's Panorama[1] may qualify. One recent episode includes the IT bungle[2] at
the retail company connected to the recently privatised Royal Mail which lead
to dozens of false fraud convictions and hundreds of jobs falsely lost by
firing with supposed cause or stress over accusations. The show goes back to
1953.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006t14n](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006t14n)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_(IT_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_\(IT_system\))

------
mellosouls
£4 million to develop an app.

Nice work if you can get it.

Where is the source code repo, the other was public?

It would be nice to know how many actual developers are working on it, what
the money is actually paying for.

Note this may not include other services involved in the supply of the app,
eg. pen testing etc has been granted in a separate £200k single-bidder
contract.

Though it's not clear if that is for the new app, the old one, or both.

[https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:280701-2020:TEXT:EN...](https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:280701-2020:TEXT:EN:HTML)

------
chiefalchemist
> "Meanwhile, officials were looking for glory (and even knighthoods), and
> ministers were focused on rolling out a “world-beating” app, rather than
> just a successful one, so that they could claim victory on the world stage."

This is the lede. Technology issues aside, the problems started here. It's a
false narrative that the idea the technology and the makers that use it are to
blame.

Too many inflated egos and too much ambition have undermined more efforts than
any other factor.

"How do you conquer the world? One country at a time."

~~~
the_other
They’re insane. At the time they started using the phrase “world beating”, we
were already “behind” other countries in containment, PPE, infection rate,
death rate.

------
iamben
There's already a "COVID-19 Exposure Notification" in the Settings>Google menu
on my Android. AFAIK the same exists on Apple. I'm at a loss as to why they
don't just say in the daily briefing "turn it on please". Develop what you
want in the meantime, but it'd go a long way towards _something_.

EDIT: missed it had to be turned on... Thanks for the replies. Fingers crossed
we get something that uses it ASAP.

~~~
iamstupidsimple
Because the NHS must write an app to consume this. It's not able to do
anything on its own.

~~~
ctz
The NHS could take and rebrand the open-source German-developed app.
Unfortunately solutions like this are presumably quite politically unpalatable
to the present government.

~~~
makomk
They'd still need to tie it into their coronavirus testing program somehow,
and that's probably the hardest part anyway.

------
walrus01
Rightfully so, there's a reason why the IOS and Android developers disallow
user-installed apps (non rooted) from doing things like bluetooth proximity
contact tracing, beaconing and similar features.

The exact same functionality could be highly misused by a popular flappy-bird
type app that tricks people into installing it.

------
DanBC
It's a good article but it's a bit confused in its use of terms.

They talk about an "NHS app", but this wasn't developed by "the" NHS nor under
the control of the NHS, it was developed by private companies for the
Department of Health and Social Care.

This is important (for people who live and vote in England) because the NHS
was saying all along that this wouldn't work and that we should just use the
Google and Apple method. It was government, not NHS, who decided against that
and chose to outsource development to private companies.

~~~
Angostura
So why is it on the NHSx github repo?

------
scoot_718
UK, home of Prince2, a way of project management so bad it failed to have a
single success in the UK to its name.

------
neonate
[https://archive.vn/u5Pxa](https://archive.vn/u5Pxa)

------
pettersolberg
try this link [https://www.technologyreview.com./2020/06/19/1004190/uk-
covi...](https://www.technologyreview.com./2020/06/19/1004190/uk-covid-
contact-tracing-app-fiasco/)

------
jacquesm
Just the contact tracing app? All of UK politics over the last decade or so is
the context within which this is just a very small line item. One own goal
after the other.

------
Lucretia9
The word "mismanagement" assumes it was meant to work. It wasn't. It was a
bung to one of Cummings' mates to make an app to gather information on us,
which didn't work, because people knew who it was from and didn't trust it. It
was never meant to work. Just like the track and trace call handlers they
"employed" to do nothing with no training, not meant to work. It's all about
syphoning money off to their mates and the Russians.

~~~
mathieuh
I think you're getting downvoted by people who don't have the contextual
information

Boris has been sitting on a report into Russian influence and he is refusing
to release it because apparently there's nothing in there.

Dido Harding has links to the Tory party and was in charge of the Talk Talk
data leak scandal, and has been put in charge of the track-and-trace programme
in the UK.

They have given all of our NHS data to Palantir for no observable gain to UK
citizens.

New corruption stories about the Tories are appearing almost daily in UK
media.

[https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/27/richard-
des...](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/27/richard-desmond-
housing-project-unlawfully-approved-robert-jenrick-isle-dogs-london-
avoid-40m-hit)

[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8416475/Boris-
Johns...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8416475/Boris-Johnson-
billionaire-Richard-Desmond-120m-property-scandal.html?ito=1490)

[https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-russia-
report-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-russia-report-
affront-to-democracy-cross-party-letter-2020-6?r=US&IR=T)

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dominic-
cummi...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dominic-cummings-
coronavirus-lockdown-trip-no-10-latest-a9529461.html)

the above is just a selection. I don't believe Hanlon's razor applies to the
Tories.

~~~
Angostura
The poster is being downvoted because it’s wasn’t suppose to work’ is
unsupported supposition.

Even _if_ the contract was awarded unfairly through the old boy’s network, the
intention was still for it to work.

~~~
lnanek2
> the intention was still for it to work

Not sure why you would think that. I've worked in government before and seen
contracts awarded to companies that had no chance of completing them. The
intention was invariably to line a friend's pockets and book lots of
consulting hours.

~~~
alimw
Even with this perspective the original comment doesn't make sense since it
also says the app was meant "to gather information on us".

