7 ms·

The recent COVID-App is a prime example of that. SAP plus German Telekom, neither of which is known for innovation, grab a 60M plus deal to develop a single app

The recent COVID-App is a prime example of that. SAP plus German Telekom, neither of which is known for innovation, grab a 60M plus deal to develop a single app. In Italy a startup took over the job for 1/50 of the price and with at least as good or better job. Is the above play a problem for Germany? No. Do you they even understand an problem? I don't think so.

88840-8855 6y ago
Excellent example with the app. It's an app that could have been designed and made with 100k, less people and better quality. And quicker. The current app is a nightmare. It shows that i had already 2 low risk encounters - but it doesn't show me when and where! I NEED this info to adapt my behavior! very bad app.
- justoreply 6y ago
  the app doesn't store location information by design for privacy reasons
  - 88840-8855 6y ago
    if you ask normal people, they will hate this - only some data fanatics want this feature. people die. the economy is suffering. millions lose jobs. still, some guys making 140k in their it engineering jobs working from home and relaxing are telling me sth about "data privacy as priority". i disagree. people disagree. Taiwan did a FANTASTIC job leveraging data. we are either not capable of that or just fanatic.... maybe both.
    - justoreply 6y ago
      several people still remember the Stasi and they don't want a state controlled app to monitor their movement. If you want your app to have the biggest installation base (without asking for a mandatory installation) you can't ask for user location, with it enabled fewer people will install it
      - 88840-8855 6y ago
        ... the same people that shop on amazon, use "payback" (a shopping monitoring system), post crap on facebook and enjoy google's personalisation. Please, mate, this is just populism what you are doing there.
        adriancr 6y ago
        I take it you haven't lived under a communist regime? There's a difference between what you share willingly and stuff being collected on you, especially in private matters.
        neuronic 6y ago
        My family was directly affected by Stasi. I care about what the government knows and what it can do to you. I constantly have 2-3 low risk exposure notifications. But it doesn't matter where they happened since I already know that I am carefully avoiding risky areas. I am sitting next to my window when working and people walk past that window within 2 meters. That alone could set off exposure notifications. Or maybe someone across the aisle in the supermarket? Would I not go to the supermarket if I know it happened there? Would I not go for a walk if I knew someone 8 meters away from me on some bench was later diagnosed with COVID? It barely serves any purpose at all outside of curiosity. The app already tells you everything you need to know.
        fogihujy 6y ago
        Please don't compare anti-consumer behaviour of US mega-corporations with the atrocities that intelligence services behind the Iron Curtain committed on their own peoples. It's simply not in the same ballpark.
        imtringued 6y ago
        Not everyone shops on amazon but everyone would have to install a government mandated app. You're overgeneralizing every human.
        LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
    - tastroder 6y ago
      The German tech scene struggled for about a month to stop the senseless data hoarding of the centralised digital contact tracing approach that was spearheaded and developed by a bunch of lobbyists. You might disagree with the concept that developed, and is generally accepted in a majority of Europe, but it's certainly not "the people" being against that. The when and where of individual encounters, especially at low levels of infected population, are pretty irrelevant. At this point you should really be aware of how you can change your behaviour to minimise risk, that really hasn't changed in the past few months.
    - Vinnl 6y ago
      > people die. the economy is suffering. millions lose jobs. So when the app tells you to quarantine, you quarantine? Or it is important enough to share everyone's location data, but not for people to more radically adjust their behaviour rather than just avoid a particular location?
    - jclos 6y ago
      > if you ask normal people, they will hate this - only some data fanatics want this feature. Show the evidence. Wanting data privacy is far from the fringe minority sentiment you imply it to be, otherwise GDPR wouldn't be so popular.
      - 88840-8855 6y ago
        life and death vs annoying ads. i think there is a difference, mate.
        adriancr 6y ago
        There should be another solution that doesn't bring stasi level monitoring...
      - jokethrowaway 6y ago
        The only people who like gdpr and cookie banners are lawyers and agencies who can charge some money for that
        malka 6y ago
        Citation neeeded.
- brazzy 6y ago
  You're talking out of your ass. Literally everyone who knows anything calls the German app a huge success, especially compared with similar efforts.
  - tupputuppu 6y ago
    In Finland, the authorities reserved 6M to create a contact tracing app and all support systems. They ended up building it for 150k, with 250k more to operate it until the end of next year. Half the population downloaded it in the first days and it works great. It's completely privacy-focused and the UX is great for both individuals as well as the government. Is the German tracking solution really 400 times as complex? Based on either citizens' adoption or UX, is it anywhere near as successful? Built by a small, Agile company, although not by a startup by any classification.
    - brazzy 6y ago
      > They ended up building it for 150k, with 250k more to operate it until the end of next year. Do you have any source for that? If true that is indeed impressive, but I am sceptical, given that your claim that "Half the population downloaded it" seems to be extremely exaggerated (https://qz.com/1898960/whats-behind-finlands-contact-tracing-app-success-user-privacy/ https://qz.com/1898960/whats-behind-finlands-contact-tracing...) One way in which the German app was clearly superior is that it was released a full month and a half earlier.
      - tupputuppu 6y ago
        Costs, use Google Translate: https://www.mtvuutiset.fi/artikkeli/koronavilkkuun-on-varattu-6-miljoona-euroa-kehitys-maksoi-147-000-minne-loput-rahat-menevat/7915338 https://www.mtvuutiset.fi/artikkeli/koronavilkkuun-on-varatt... Share of population that downloaded it - Your article only talk about the first 24 hours. See for instance this article that says 1.8 milloin a month and a half ago: https://mobiili.fi/2020/09/08/koronavilkun-lataukset-yli-18-miljoonan-nain-moni-on-poistanut-sovelluksen/ https://mobiili.fi/2020/09/08/koronavilkun-lataukset-yli-18-... That's beginning to be half of the relevant population in a country of 6 million, when you take out kids and people in old folks' homes.
justoreply 6y ago
With just the difference that in Germany that app works, in Italy the correct infrastructure/process was not built, sick data information was never uploaded so the app is useless
- 88840-8855 6y ago
  how do you know the app is working? because we value privacy SO much, we don't even know if the app has ANY effect - taking all the anecdotes aside.
  - justoreply 6y ago
    I had several notifications of low risk exposures, so the app is fed with some data. This doesn't happen in the Italian version of the app if you are living in some regions, for example. If the app is useful, this is another topic, but it was not the point of this thread.
  - tastroder 6y ago
    There were plenty of cases where in app notifications lead to people getting tested and in touch with their local tracing efforts. You don't need privacy invading levels of analytics to measure that. With the low numbers we had over the past months exactly what else do you expect?
WanderPanda 6y ago
What afraids me is, that here in Germany nobody seems to care anymore. The big numbers are just thrown around and everyone (especially the younger generation) has lost any sense as the media is just cheering along.
- tiaxxl 6y ago
  As long as the boomers get their retirement payments, who cares about future generations?
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  I wish I could upvote you more. This is what I noticed in Germany as well. The government keeps tooting their own horn on how in every statistic they're the best in Europe and the media parrots that while the younger generations just takes it for granted and doesn't bother questioning the poor decisions the government makes while they spend the public tax money like drunken sailors because hey, "we're Europe's no. 1, what could our government ever do wrong?"
  - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    I agree that the waste of taxpayer money in Germany is beyond comprehension (while they do take utmost care when it comes to taxing you) and as a young German myself I also agree that many young people just don't question the media, if they get involved in politics at all. But I also know many who do and they've mostly just given up on the country. Because emigration aside, what are you going to do?
    - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
      >Because emigration aside, what are you going to do? Maybe vote the corrupt leeches out?
      - andi999 6y ago
        I had a discussion recently, and I think generally in Germany politicians are considered incompetent instead of corrupt. Like in cross border leasing/ public private partnership etc.
est31 6y ago
The German federal government had past bad experiences with the company contracted to collect car/truck tolls on federal roadways. The product launch was delayed due to the contractor and thus the government lost lots of revenue from tolls. A 15 year long fight with the owners of the company ensued. Maybe they wanted to avoid that by just putting a large pile of cash onto the table, ensuring that SAP+DTG put their best people behind it. Delays in COVID-App deployment cost real lives instead of just revenue. It's great that it worked nice in Italy, but giving the contract to a random startup is more of a gamble I think.
- siscia 6y ago
  I am not a big fan of bending spoon, but calling them a random startup is quite misslleading. They are a rather small company by headcount but with great success in the app consumer market and with a lot of experience in the sector. Not everything need to be huge to be good and successfully, especially in technology.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ivan_gammel 6y ago
You are comparing costs of bakery which made an apple pie with the price of apple. 60M budget included much more than just an app, which is basically a frontend to a sophisticated government operation. If you want to make a point about inefficiency of German corporations, find the right figures first. Upd: I previously wrote, that Italian app shares the source code with German one, which was probably not correct. In fact, Italy collaborated with Germany on developing a contact tracing solution before, but the apps were developed independently with different requirements. I’m sorry.
- siscia 6y ago
  In my understanding the Italian app was developed from scratch, definitely no idea why you think that the two app share code. Can you share your source?
  - ivan_gammel 6y ago
    You are right, thank you! I have updated my comment.
- jolux 6y ago
  60mm is a preposterous amount of money for building almost any application. That’s like 600 engineer years of time in the US.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > That’s like 600 engineer years of time in the US. It's a lot less than that in terms of total personnel costs ($100K is a modest salary-only for a software engineer, it's extremely low as a full cost of employment.)
    - okl 6y ago
      As an average, I guess it's about right for Germany.
    - jolux 6y ago
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
If the app was developed on time and works, thats fine. 60 million isn't that much in the grand scheme of government contracts. In a situation like this i would want a proven vendor, and pay premium over startups. UK has spent 11 billion on a healthcare IT system and got nothing to show for it. https://independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/nhs-pulls-the-plug-on-its-11bn-it-system-2330906.html https://independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/hea...
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  It doesn't have nothing to show - lots of stuff did get usefully upgraded (thankfully) although of course nowhere near 11 billion's worth. It's the public sector commissioning the private sector in matters that it often doesn't understand. This will fail far more often than it will succeed.
  - joejerryronnie 6y ago
    It’s also the byzantine vendor sourcing process that many gov agencies use. They end up hiring companies who are experts in navigating that process vs companies who are experts in the actual competency required by the project.
throw0101a 6y ago
> The recent COVID-App is a prime example of that. SAP plus German Telekom, neither of which is known for innovation, grab a 60M plus deal to develop a single app. Meanwhile in Canada Shopify and Blackberry got together and helped the federal Canadian Digital Service in coding up an app, with the code available on GitHub: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID_Alert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID_Alert * https://www.covidshield.app https://www.covidshield.app * https://github.com/CovidShield https://github.com/CovidShield No money exchanged hands AFAICT.
- throwaway7281 6y ago
  Yes, imagine SAP and Telekom would have said: see, we are so profitable and rich beyond our means by extracting value from our economy each and every day, we want to give something back and build this app for free. What kind of ad this would have been. So they just come across as greedy, corrupt bastard - which probably has the positive side of being very much closer to the truth.
  - durnygbur 6y ago
    They like money, what you're going to do? BTW Enjoy your 50Mbs copper DSL connection.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  It's mostly a fork of Google's contact tracing app, with some regionalization added.
oezi 6y ago
That's a really bad example, because the cost of the pandemic alone for the German government was forecasted as 1500 billion EUR [1]. Any spending that would make the pandemic become a fraction less severe is probably a net win. So if you have to chose between 60m EUR offer and a 95% chance of success of all features and in time delivery and another offer of 10m EUR and 90%, what should you choose? Why be thrifty at this point? My question is rather why didn't they went out to spend more? So many more things that could have been added: public places check-ins (e.g. When visiting restaurants), more interfaces for laboratory to upload data, manual meeting log, collaborations with other countries... [1] https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2020-10/coronavirus-krise-kosten-gesundheitssystem-konjunkturprogramme-wirtschaft-wiederaufbau https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2020-10/coronavirus-...

88840-8855 6y ago

Excellent example with the app. It's an app that could have been designed and made with 100k, less people and better quality. And quicker. The current app is a nightmare. It shows that i had already 2 low risk encounters - but it doesn't show me when and where! I NEED this info to adapt my behavior! very bad app.

justoreply 6y ago
the app doesn't store location information by design for privacy reasons
- 88840-8855 6y ago
  if you ask normal people, they will hate this - only some data fanatics want this feature. people die. the economy is suffering. millions lose jobs. still, some guys making 140k in their it engineering jobs working from home and relaxing are telling me sth about "data privacy as priority". i disagree. people disagree. Taiwan did a FANTASTIC job leveraging data. we are either not capable of that or just fanatic.... maybe both.
  - justoreply 6y ago
    several people still remember the Stasi and they don't want a state controlled app to monitor their movement. If you want your app to have the biggest installation base (without asking for a mandatory installation) you can't ask for user location, with it enabled fewer people will install it
    - 88840-8855 6y ago
      ... the same people that shop on amazon, use "payback" (a shopping monitoring system), post crap on facebook and enjoy google's personalisation. Please, mate, this is just populism what you are doing there.
      - adriancr 6y ago
        I take it you haven't lived under a communist regime? There's a difference between what you share willingly and stuff being collected on you, especially in private matters.
      - neuronic 6y ago
        My family was directly affected by Stasi. I care about what the government knows and what it can do to you. I constantly have 2-3 low risk exposure notifications. But it doesn't matter where they happened since I already know that I am carefully avoiding risky areas. I am sitting next to my window when working and people walk past that window within 2 meters. That alone could set off exposure notifications. Or maybe someone across the aisle in the supermarket? Would I not go to the supermarket if I know it happened there? Would I not go for a walk if I knew someone 8 meters away from me on some bench was later diagnosed with COVID? It barely serves any purpose at all outside of curiosity. The app already tells you everything you need to know.
      - fogihujy 6y ago
        Please don't compare anti-consumer behaviour of US mega-corporations with the atrocities that intelligence services behind the Iron Curtain committed on their own peoples. It's simply not in the same ballpark.
      - imtringued 6y ago
        Not everyone shops on amazon but everyone would have to install a government mandated app. You're overgeneralizing every human.
        LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
  - tastroder 6y ago
    The German tech scene struggled for about a month to stop the senseless data hoarding of the centralised digital contact tracing approach that was spearheaded and developed by a bunch of lobbyists. You might disagree with the concept that developed, and is generally accepted in a majority of Europe, but it's certainly not "the people" being against that. The when and where of individual encounters, especially at low levels of infected population, are pretty irrelevant. At this point you should really be aware of how you can change your behaviour to minimise risk, that really hasn't changed in the past few months.
  - Vinnl 6y ago
    > people die. the economy is suffering. millions lose jobs. So when the app tells you to quarantine, you quarantine? Or it is important enough to share everyone's location data, but not for people to more radically adjust their behaviour rather than just avoid a particular location?
  - jclos 6y ago
    > if you ask normal people, they will hate this - only some data fanatics want this feature. Show the evidence. Wanting data privacy is far from the fringe minority sentiment you imply it to be, otherwise GDPR wouldn't be so popular.
    - 88840-8855 6y ago
      life and death vs annoying ads. i think there is a difference, mate.
      - adriancr 6y ago
        There should be another solution that doesn't bring stasi level monitoring...
    - jokethrowaway 6y ago
      The only people who like gdpr and cookie banners are lawyers and agencies who can charge some money for that
      - malka 6y ago
        Citation neeeded.
brazzy 6y ago
You're talking out of your ass. Literally everyone who knows anything calls the German app a huge success, especially compared with similar efforts.
- tupputuppu 6y ago
  In Finland, the authorities reserved 6M to create a contact tracing app and all support systems. They ended up building it for 150k, with 250k more to operate it until the end of next year. Half the population downloaded it in the first days and it works great. It's completely privacy-focused and the UX is great for both individuals as well as the government. Is the German tracking solution really 400 times as complex? Based on either citizens' adoption or UX, is it anywhere near as successful? Built by a small, Agile company, although not by a startup by any classification.
  - brazzy 6y ago
    > They ended up building it for 150k, with 250k more to operate it until the end of next year. Do you have any source for that? If true that is indeed impressive, but I am sceptical, given that your claim that "Half the population downloaded it" seems to be extremely exaggerated (https://qz.com/1898960/whats-behind-finlands-contact-tracing-app-success-user-privacy/ https://qz.com/1898960/whats-behind-finlands-contact-tracing...) One way in which the German app was clearly superior is that it was released a full month and a half earlier.
    - tupputuppu 6y ago
      Costs, use Google Translate: https://www.mtvuutiset.fi/artikkeli/koronavilkkuun-on-varattu-6-miljoona-euroa-kehitys-maksoi-147-000-minne-loput-rahat-menevat/7915338 https://www.mtvuutiset.fi/artikkeli/koronavilkkuun-on-varatt... Share of population that downloaded it - Your article only talk about the first 24 hours. See for instance this article that says 1.8 milloin a month and a half ago: https://mobiili.fi/2020/09/08/koronavilkun-lataukset-yli-18-miljoonan-nain-moni-on-poistanut-sovelluksen/ https://mobiili.fi/2020/09/08/koronavilkun-lataukset-yli-18-... That's beginning to be half of the relevant population in a country of 6 million, when you take out kids and people in old folks' homes.

justoreply 6y ago

With just the difference that in Germany that app works, in Italy the correct infrastructure/process was not built, sick data information was never uploaded so the app is useless

88840-8855 6y ago
how do you know the app is working? because we value privacy SO much, we don't even know if the app has ANY effect - taking all the anecdotes aside.
- justoreply 6y ago
  I had several notifications of low risk exposures, so the app is fed with some data. This doesn't happen in the Italian version of the app if you are living in some regions, for example. If the app is useful, this is another topic, but it was not the point of this thread.
- tastroder 6y ago
  There were plenty of cases where in app notifications lead to people getting tested and in touch with their local tracing efforts. You don't need privacy invading levels of analytics to measure that. With the low numbers we had over the past months exactly what else do you expect?

WanderPanda 6y ago

What afraids me is, that here in Germany nobody seems to care anymore. The big numbers are just thrown around and everyone (especially the younger generation) has lost any sense as the media is just cheering along.

tiaxxl 6y ago
As long as the boomers get their retirement payments, who cares about future generations?
ChuckNorris89 6y ago
I wish I could upvote you more. This is what I noticed in Germany as well. The government keeps tooting their own horn on how in every statistic they're the best in Europe and the media parrots that while the younger generations just takes it for granted and doesn't bother questioning the poor decisions the government makes while they spend the public tax money like drunken sailors because hey, "we're Europe's no. 1, what could our government ever do wrong?"
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  I agree that the waste of taxpayer money in Germany is beyond comprehension (while they do take utmost care when it comes to taxing you) and as a young German myself I also agree that many young people just don't question the media, if they get involved in politics at all. But I also know many who do and they've mostly just given up on the country. Because emigration aside, what are you going to do?
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    >Because emigration aside, what are you going to do? Maybe vote the corrupt leeches out?
    - andi999 6y ago
      I had a discussion recently, and I think generally in Germany politicians are considered incompetent instead of corrupt. Like in cross border leasing/ public private partnership etc.

est31 6y ago

The German federal government had past bad experiences with the company contracted to collect car/truck tolls on federal roadways. The product launch was delayed due to the contractor and thus the government lost lots of revenue from tolls. A 15 year long fight with the owners of the company ensued. Maybe they wanted to avoid that by just putting a large pile of cash onto the table, ensuring that SAP+DTG put their best people behind it. Delays in COVID-App deployment cost real lives instead of just revenue. It's great that it worked nice in Italy, but giving the contract to a random startup is more of a gamble I think.

siscia 6y ago
I am not a big fan of bending spoon, but calling them a random startup is quite misslleading. They are a rather small company by headcount but with great success in the app consumer market and with a lot of experience in the sector. Not everything need to be huge to be good and successfully, especially in technology.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ivan_gammel 6y ago

You are comparing costs of bakery which made an apple pie with the price of apple. 60M budget included much more than just an app, which is basically a frontend to a sophisticated government operation. If you want to make a point about inefficiency of German corporations, find the right figures first. Upd: I previously wrote, that Italian app shares the source code with German one, which was probably not correct. In fact, Italy collaborated with Germany on developing a contact tracing solution before, but the apps were developed independently with different requirements. I’m sorry.

siscia 6y ago
In my understanding the Italian app was developed from scratch, definitely no idea why you think that the two app share code. Can you share your source?
- ivan_gammel 6y ago
  You are right, thank you! I have updated my comment.
jolux 6y ago
60mm is a preposterous amount of money for building almost any application. That’s like 600 engineer years of time in the US.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > That’s like 600 engineer years of time in the US. It's a lot less than that in terms of total personnel costs ($100K is a modest salary-only for a software engineer, it's extremely low as a full cost of employment.)
  - okl 6y ago
    As an average, I guess it's about right for Germany.
  - jolux 6y ago

ClumsyPilot 6y ago

If the app was developed on time and works, thats fine. 60 million isn't that much in the grand scheme of government contracts. In a situation like this i would want a proven vendor, and pay premium over startups. UK has spent 11 billion on a healthcare IT system and got nothing to show for it. https://independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/nhs-pulls-the-plug-on-its-11bn-it-system-2330906.html https://independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/hea...

robertlagrant 6y ago
It doesn't have nothing to show - lots of stuff did get usefully upgraded (thankfully) although of course nowhere near 11 billion's worth. It's the public sector commissioning the private sector in matters that it often doesn't understand. This will fail far more often than it will succeed.
- joejerryronnie 6y ago
  It’s also the byzantine vendor sourcing process that many gov agencies use. They end up hiring companies who are experts in navigating that process vs companies who are experts in the actual competency required by the project.

throw0101a 6y ago

> The recent COVID-App is a prime example of that. SAP plus German Telekom, neither of which is known for innovation, grab a 60M plus deal to develop a single app. Meanwhile in Canada Shopify and Blackberry got together and helped the federal Canadian Digital Service in coding up an app, with the code available on GitHub: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID_Alert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID_Alert * https://www.covidshield.app https://www.covidshield.app * https://github.com/CovidShield https://github.com/CovidShield No money exchanged hands AFAICT.

throwaway7281 6y ago
Yes, imagine SAP and Telekom would have said: see, we are so profitable and rich beyond our means by extracting value from our economy each and every day, we want to give something back and build this app for free. What kind of ad this would have been. So they just come across as greedy, corrupt bastard - which probably has the positive side of being very much closer to the truth.
- durnygbur 6y ago
  They like money, what you're going to do? BTW Enjoy your 50Mbs copper DSL connection.
908B64B197 6y ago
It's mostly a fork of Google's contact tracing app, with some regionalization added.

oezi 6y ago

That's a really bad example, because the cost of the pandemic alone for the German government was forecasted as 1500 billion EUR [1]. Any spending that would make the pandemic become a fraction less severe is probably a net win. So if you have to chose between 60m EUR offer and a 95% chance of success of all features and in time delivery and another offer of 10m EUR and 90%, what should you choose? Why be thrifty at this point? My question is rather why didn't they went out to spend more? So many more things that could have been added: public places check-ins (e.g. When visiting restaurants), more interfaces for laboratory to upload data, manual meeting log, collaborations with other countries... [1] https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2020-10/coronavirus-krise-kosten-gesundheitssystem-konjunkturprogramme-wirtschaft-wiederaufbau https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2020-10/coronavirus-...