6 ms·

It's interesting to see these tracing app discussions crop up all over the world at the moment. In Germany it quite literally took dozens of public interest gro

It's interesting to see these tracing app discussions crop up all over the world at the moment. In Germany it quite literally took dozens of public interest groups, two weeks of media attention, EU guidance and an open letter by hundreds of scientists to make the government switch from central data collection to an acceptable decentralised approach. The amount of misinformation put out by lobby groups in the process was frankly astonishing, is that similar in Australia or is this app primarily driven by the government itself?

lukevdp 6y ago
This app has been released by the government.
temac 6y ago
> In Germany it quite literally took dozens of public interest groups, two weeks of media attention, EU guidance and an open letter by hundreds of scientists to make the government switch from central data collection to an acceptable decentralised approach. Interesting. Do you have any pointer on the current German approach? I've been looking at the Robert protocol from Inria+Fraunhofer, and I'm not sure I like the central secret DB it requires.
- def_true_false 6y ago
  I guess they meant the DP-3T. See https://github.com/DP-3T/documents https://github.com/DP-3T/documents
  - temac 6y ago
    I think so, and it seems this is very recent; I found that: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-europe-tech/germany-flips-on-smartphone-contact-tracing-backs-apple-and-google-idUSKCN22807J https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-europe... I hope France will follow.
- tastroder 6y ago
  This happened over the weekend so details are pretty vague and mostly available in German. I'd expect more to follow in the next few days, official statements didn't yet talk about who will take over implementation I believe. But w.r.t. the Robert protocol, that's the PEPP-PT one that was pushed against. Differences between Robert and the proposal for Germany were minimal. While there are a few at the moment I expect the solution to work with DP3T / integration of the Gapple APIs. Future travel in mind it wouldn't make much sense to develop something else at this point imho.
addandsubtract 6y ago
Do you have a source for the change of course? The CCC published an open letter[0] 2 days ago and I doubt anything changed over the weekend. [0] https://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2020/corona-tracing-app-offener-brief-an-bundeskanzleramt-und-gesundheitsminister https://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2020/corona-tracing-app-offene...
- tastroder 6y ago
  Only German sources at the moment, the head of the Bundeskanzleramt issued a joint statement with health minister Spahn over the weekend. https://twitter.com/HBraun/status/1254317591897804801?s=19 https://twitter.com/HBraun/status/1254317591897804801?s=19
- iddqd 6y ago
  Germany flips to Apple-Google approach on smartphone contact tracing: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-europe-tech/germany-flips-on-smartphone-contact-tracing-backs-apple-and-google-idUSKCN22807J https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-europe...
rstuart4133 6y ago
> is that similar in Australia or is this app primarily driven by the government itself? I'm an Australian - and from my perspective the answer is "no". They are doing the best job they can. In this case, the mandarins running the place (we have a West Minister system) look to be very unfamiliar with open sources development practices, and the positive impacts it has software reliability, productivity and the trust you can place in it. But to answer your question - no one selfishly perusing personal agendas or trying to enrich themselves here. That's not a good excuse for getting it wrong as they have done in this instance of course. But it is just a question of them coming to grips with something they've never bothered to familiarise themselves with. Up until now when they needed a large IT project done, they've just hired IBM at an exorbitant fee. Amazingly, failures brought on by this waterfall style approach of the order of $4B in one instance (and there are many), the collapse of the census and a few weeks ago the collapse of a keystone of their infrastructure never made them consider alternatives. The fact that most successful companies on the planet, the FANG's, main infrastructure is based on open source and it's development model seems to have pass them by unnoticed. So this alternative style of IT development being shoved down their throats is a huge bridge for them to cross. Here's hoping they make it to the other side :D
- angry_octet 6y ago
  I would have to disagree that this is not driven by the government. This approach -- which has significant privacy defects -- is very much driven by a desire to have centralised control. It is quite possible them to think that they are the best people to have this data, and that they will manage it best, despite evidence to the contrary. You have to understand that none of the senior officials have any desire but to please the politicans, and they are all extremely risk averse. They have a long history of covering up mistakes, breaches of the ministerial code of conduct and their own maladministration, so citizen privacy isn't even on their list of concerns.

lukevdp 6y ago

This app has been released by the government.

temac 6y ago

> In Germany it quite literally took dozens of public interest groups, two weeks of media attention, EU guidance and an open letter by hundreds of scientists to make the government switch from central data collection to an acceptable decentralised approach. Interesting. Do you have any pointer on the current German approach? I've been looking at the Robert protocol from Inria+Fraunhofer, and I'm not sure I like the central secret DB it requires.

def_true_false 6y ago
I guess they meant the DP-3T. See https://github.com/DP-3T/documents https://github.com/DP-3T/documents
- temac 6y ago
  I think so, and it seems this is very recent; I found that: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-europe-tech/germany-flips-on-smartphone-contact-tracing-backs-apple-and-google-idUSKCN22807J https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-europe... I hope France will follow.
tastroder 6y ago
This happened over the weekend so details are pretty vague and mostly available in German. I'd expect more to follow in the next few days, official statements didn't yet talk about who will take over implementation I believe. But w.r.t. the Robert protocol, that's the PEPP-PT one that was pushed against. Differences between Robert and the proposal for Germany were minimal. While there are a few at the moment I expect the solution to work with DP3T / integration of the Gapple APIs. Future travel in mind it wouldn't make much sense to develop something else at this point imho.

addandsubtract 6y ago

Do you have a source for the change of course? The CCC published an open letter[0] 2 days ago and I doubt anything changed over the weekend. [0] https://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2020/corona-tracing-app-offener-brief-an-bundeskanzleramt-und-gesundheitsminister https://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2020/corona-tracing-app-offene...

tastroder 6y ago
Only German sources at the moment, the head of the Bundeskanzleramt issued a joint statement with health minister Spahn over the weekend. https://twitter.com/HBraun/status/1254317591897804801?s=19 https://twitter.com/HBraun/status/1254317591897804801?s=19
iddqd 6y ago
Germany flips to Apple-Google approach on smartphone contact tracing: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-europe-tech/germany-flips-on-smartphone-contact-tracing-backs-apple-and-google-idUSKCN22807J https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-europe...

rstuart4133 6y ago

> is that similar in Australia or is this app primarily driven by the government itself? I'm an Australian - and from my perspective the answer is "no". They are doing the best job they can. In this case, the mandarins running the place (we have a West Minister system) look to be very unfamiliar with open sources development practices, and the positive impacts it has software reliability, productivity and the trust you can place in it. But to answer your question - no one selfishly perusing personal agendas or trying to enrich themselves here. That's not a good excuse for getting it wrong as they have done in this instance of course. But it is just a question of them coming to grips with something they've never bothered to familiarise themselves with. Up until now when they needed a large IT project done, they've just hired IBM at an exorbitant fee. Amazingly, failures brought on by this waterfall style approach of the order of $4B in one instance (and there are many), the collapse of the census and a few weeks ago the collapse of a keystone of their infrastructure never made them consider alternatives. The fact that most successful companies on the planet, the FANG's, main infrastructure is based on open source and it's development model seems to have pass them by unnoticed. So this alternative style of IT development being shoved down their throats is a huge bridge for them to cross. Here's hoping they make it to the other side :D

angry_octet 6y ago
I would have to disagree that this is not driven by the government. This approach -- which has significant privacy defects -- is very much driven by a desire to have centralised control. It is quite possible them to think that they are the best people to have this data, and that they will manage it best, despite evidence to the contrary. You have to understand that none of the senior officials have any desire but to please the politicans, and they are all extremely risk averse. They have a long history of covering up mistakes, breaches of the ministerial code of conduct and their own maladministration, so citizen privacy isn't even on their list of concerns.