5 ms·

The failed rollout of Britain's covid-19 app were the result of clear errors

64 points by kjakm 6y ago

pgt 6y ago
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.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  There are a few. There's one called 'crash' but I can't find it now, a bunch of case studies of IT failuers. It wax pretty much the same underlying story repeated over and over and over...
- rossdavidh 6y ago
  Highly agreed; failure is much more informative than success.
- tobylane 6y ago
  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)
rjmunro 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.
  - wbl 6y ago
    And for it to work people need to trust it.
    - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
      True, and I would not trust it if I had a phone that could run it. It's not trust in the app but in the government. I recall some dickhead politician being asked about security of a centralised app, his response was "GDPR would take care of that". Because hackers care about that kind of thing. Honestly this uk government is so bloody inept. When you want theresa may back, that tells you something.
  - ethbro 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        An NGO offers substantially more protection than a direct government store. Whether that is enough protection is a fair debate.
iamben 6y ago
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 6y ago
  Because the NHS must write an app to consume this. It's not able to do anything on its own.
  - ctz 6y ago
    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.
    - bengale 6y ago
      Makes it harder to funnel our money to their mates.
    - makomk 6y ago
      They'd still need to tie it into their coronavirus testing program somehow, and that's probably the hardest part anyway.
    - Angostura 6y ago
      Because the worflkflow that one country’s screening and tracking system follows is clearly the same as another.
- Yanu-3452 6y ago
  I think that's just the UI to enable the bare API, you still need an app that uses that API? Kind of like enabling location won't give you a map, you still need a map app to use that location. (For example). That said, the efforts of other countries shows had they gone with that API in the first place they would perhaps have something running by now, rather than insisting on going their own way because they wanted the data centralised.
pettersolberg 6y ago
try this link https://www.technologyreview.com./2020/06/19/1004190/uk-covid-contact-tracing-app-fiasco/ https://www.technologyreview.com./2020/06/19/1004190/uk-covi...
walrus01 6y ago
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.
Lucretia9 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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-desmond-housing-project-unlawfully-approved-robert-jenrick-isle-dogs-london-avoid-40m-hit https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/27/richard-des... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8416475/Boris-Johnson-billionaire-Richard-Desmond-120m-property-scandal.html?ito=1490 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8416475/Boris-Johns... https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-russia-report-affront-to-democracy-cross-party-letter-2020-6?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-russia-report-... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dominic-cummings-coronavirus-lockdown-trip-no-10-latest-a9529461.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dominic-cummi... the above is just a selection. I don't believe Hanlon's razor applies to the Tories.
  - Angostura 6y ago
    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 6y ago
SeanDav 6y ago
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-system-10bn https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records-... 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.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families... https://www.henricodolfing.com/2019/01/case-study-10-billion-it-disaster.html https://www.henricodolfing.com/2019/01/case-study-10-billion...
DanBC 6y ago
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 6y ago
  So why is it on the NHSx github repo?
mellosouls 6y ago
£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:HTML https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:280701-2020:TEXT:EN...
jacquesm 6y ago
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.
chiefalchemist 6y ago
> "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 6y ago
  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.
scoot_718 6y ago
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 6y ago
https://archive.vn/u5Pxa https://archive.vn/u5Pxa

64 points by kjakm 6y ago

pgt 6y ago

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.

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
There are a few. There's one called 'crash' but I can't find it now, a bunch of case studies of IT failuers. It wax pretty much the same underlying story repeated over and over and over...
rossdavidh 6y ago
Highly agreed; failure is much more informative than success.
tobylane 6y ago
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)

rjmunro 6y ago

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 6y ago
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.
- wbl 6y ago
  And for it to work people need to trust it.
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    True, and I would not trust it if I had a phone that could run it. It's not trust in the app but in the government. I recall some dickhead politician being asked about security of a centralised app, his response was "GDPR would take care of that". Because hackers care about that kind of thing. Honestly this uk government is so bloody inept. When you want theresa may back, that tells you something.
- ethbro 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      An NGO offers substantially more protection than a direct government store. Whether that is enough protection is a fair debate.

iamben 6y ago

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 6y ago
Because the NHS must write an app to consume this. It's not able to do anything on its own.
- ctz 6y ago
  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.
  - bengale 6y ago
    Makes it harder to funnel our money to their mates.
  - makomk 6y ago
    They'd still need to tie it into their coronavirus testing program somehow, and that's probably the hardest part anyway.
  - Angostura 6y ago
    Because the worflkflow that one country’s screening and tracking system follows is clearly the same as another.
Yanu-3452 6y ago
I think that's just the UI to enable the bare API, you still need an app that uses that API? Kind of like enabling location won't give you a map, you still need a map app to use that location. (For example). That said, the efforts of other countries shows had they gone with that API in the first place they would perhaps have something running by now, rather than insisting on going their own way because they wanted the data centralised.

pettersolberg 6y ago

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

walrus01 6y ago

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.

Lucretia9 6y ago

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 6y ago
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-desmond-housing-project-unlawfully-approved-robert-jenrick-isle-dogs-london-avoid-40m-hit https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/27/richard-des... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8416475/Boris-Johnson-billionaire-Richard-Desmond-120m-property-scandal.html?ito=1490 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8416475/Boris-Johns... https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-russia-report-affront-to-democracy-cross-party-letter-2020-6?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-russia-report-... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dominic-cummings-coronavirus-lockdown-trip-no-10-latest-a9529461.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dominic-cummi... the above is just a selection. I don't believe Hanlon's razor applies to the Tories.
- Angostura 6y ago
  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 6y ago

SeanDav 6y ago

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-system-10bn https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records-... 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.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families... https://www.henricodolfing.com/2019/01/case-study-10-billion-it-disaster.html https://www.henricodolfing.com/2019/01/case-study-10-billion...

DanBC 6y ago

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 6y ago
So why is it on the NHSx github repo?

mellosouls 6y ago

£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:HTML https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:280701-2020:TEXT:EN...

jacquesm 6y ago

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.

chiefalchemist 6y ago

> "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 6y ago
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.

scoot_718 6y ago

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 6y ago

https://archive.vn/u5Pxa https://archive.vn/u5Pxa