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Serco have been given (without competitive tender) £345M to run this system. I dunno, I expect things to work for that amount of free money.

lloydatkinson 6y ago
It's serco. Them, alongside, for example, Crapita are one of the big corporate disaster companies the government inevitably gives software contracts to and inevitably they fail. Given their track records it is beyond incompetence, I honestly believe they only care about profits and barely disguise that fact.
vmception 6y ago
oh lol. not surprised there but yeah its annoying because the rest of us hone our skills an exchange time for much less.
malux85 6y ago
Ok Serco, you just made The List
giancarlostoro 6y ago
That's more than healthcare.gov's colossal screw up to build a site that couldn't register more than ten people or whatever the figures were.
juliansimioni 6y ago
One of the hard things about computers is that things often work perfectly right up until they don't. If you're driving a car a little bit too far between maintenance checkups, it might start making some concerning noises, feel off, etc. But no one not intimately familiar with spreadsheets would think anything is near failure when they have 65534 rows (showing my age, it's a bit higher now, right? :) ). This has happened to lots of people that "should know better", like when Slashdot hit a 16M comment limit in 2006: https://slashdot.org/story/06/11/09/1534204/slashdot-posting-bug-infuriates-haggard-admins https://slashdot.org/story/06/11/09/1534204/slashdot-posting...
- dividedbyzero 6y ago
  For that amount of money I think standards should be way higher than for Bob from accounting who built a clever Excel sheet. I don't expect perfection, but there are ways and techniques to build and run software in a way that minimizes the likelihood of such problems, and this really doesn't make the impression that they followed any best practices at all. They should (but of course won't) be held accountable for that.
- zimpenfish 6y ago
  > But no one not intimately familiar with spreadsheets ...should be given £345M to run a vital data intensive response to a pandemic?
coldcode 6y ago
345M pesos is too much to pay for someone building a system that uses columns in Excel to manage data (btw that's 16M dollars).

lloydatkinson 6y ago

It's serco. Them, alongside, for example, Crapita are one of the big corporate disaster companies the government inevitably gives software contracts to and inevitably they fail. Given their track records it is beyond incompetence, I honestly believe they only care about profits and barely disguise that fact.

vmception 6y ago

oh lol. not surprised there but yeah its annoying because the rest of us hone our skills an exchange time for much less.

malux85 6y ago

Ok Serco, you just made The List

giancarlostoro 6y ago

That's more than healthcare.gov's colossal screw up to build a site that couldn't register more than ten people or whatever the figures were.

juliansimioni 6y ago

One of the hard things about computers is that things often work perfectly right up until they don't. If you're driving a car a little bit too far between maintenance checkups, it might start making some concerning noises, feel off, etc. But no one not intimately familiar with spreadsheets would think anything is near failure when they have 65534 rows (showing my age, it's a bit higher now, right? :) ). This has happened to lots of people that "should know better", like when Slashdot hit a 16M comment limit in 2006: https://slashdot.org/story/06/11/09/1534204/slashdot-posting-bug-infuriates-haggard-admins https://slashdot.org/story/06/11/09/1534204/slashdot-posting...

dividedbyzero 6y ago
For that amount of money I think standards should be way higher than for Bob from accounting who built a clever Excel sheet. I don't expect perfection, but there are ways and techniques to build and run software in a way that minimizes the likelihood of such problems, and this really doesn't make the impression that they followed any best practices at all. They should (but of course won't) be held accountable for that.
zimpenfish 6y ago
> But no one not intimately familiar with spreadsheets ...should be given £345M to run a vital data intensive response to a pandemic?

coldcode 6y ago

345M pesos is too much to pay for someone building a system that uses columns in Excel to manage data (btw that's 16M dollars).