Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmlnr | Hacker News Reader

I voluntarily live in the UK as an EU citizen. Most countries have faults, these are the British faults. Germany won't act without a manual to follow, in Hungary you need direct permission from the maffia (also known as the governing party); choose your poison.

View on HN

As another EU citizen living in the UK, I don't think anyone is saying everything the UK does ever is stupid or doesn't work. But there's a certain cultural thing about doing things "my way" despite good evidence it's not worth doing that way.

I am not sure why everything has to be compared in terms of all or nothing.

In this case specifically, they knew that they're playing a loosing game since Apple and Google are ultimately the gatekeepers of the gadgets doing the actual tracing.

Thinking that somehow the UK has the individual power to go ahead and reasonably do it's own thing is nothing but arrogant.

They spent 108m GBP in the process of failing, too. The Swiss spent a couple million CHF. I wonder where that money went.

ETA: sources in grandchild comment.

108m pound for a tracking app? How can I develop software for the British government?

Be friends with Dominic Cummings

Source?

UK app cost was reported here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/world/europe/uk-contact-t...

I am trusting Kenny Paterson at ETH Zurich on the cost of the Swiss app, since he was involved in developing it: https://twitter.com/kennyog/status/1273612397861842950?s=20

ETA: NYT article also mentions a "secretive procurement process" for the UK app, which sounds a bit worrying.

> a "secretive procurement process" for the UK app, which sounds a bit worrying

Sadly this is unsurprising and par for the course for the UK government these days.

It was awarded to a supplier through the G-Cloud procurement framework, who obtained their place their in accordance with OJEU rules. Details here: https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/2d8c89c5-6...

Not particularly secretive, just a bit bureaucratic.

I'm a little confused. The company cited in your post is Zuhlke Engineering Ltd, which is a Swiss company that appears to be taking over the management of the app going forward, for a much more reasonable contract price of 3.9M GBP [1]. I don't think they're the ones who consumed 108M GBP on past development.

Does the G-Cloud procurement website have any details on where the 108M was spent?

[1] Random website I found when googling, grain of salt etc: https://bylinetimes.com/2020/05/08/nhsx-contract-tracing-app...

The £108m is for the contact tracing service, which includes 15000 employees. The app is not part of that deal.

108 million was the price for operaring the contact tracing service, not the app.

Well, the difference is that German manual tends to work in the end. Certainly worked for Coronavirus (so far).

There were a lot of bad editions of the manual throughout the 20th century.

Godwin's law at work…

Not just talking about the '40s editions.

Ah yes? Please tell what in Germany works's, Rail-stations? Airports?

I think there are times when the go it alone and keep calm carry on attitude works well, but this is not one of them. Hopefully lessons will be learned.

Mind that Germany went towards a centralized non-Apple- Google solution first (PEPP-PT) They just took the turn sooner than the British and others.

tbf, everyone went for their own custom solution initially since apple/google only really announced their plans for a joined effort some time early/mid April or so

The decision to centralize the data collection was not due to a lack of a privacy-preserving API. Any country could have gone this route independent of Apple and Google.

You have to bear in mind that the UK press was pushing the narrative that non-decentralized tracing was boneheaded British exceptionalism that ignored what every other country was doing even back when Germany, France, and various other countries were still basing their apps on that exact same solution. Because they had a narrative they wanted to push, that narrative was that the UK was a stupid backwards country that needed to copy the enlightened Europeans but was refusing to because it was run by Brexit-supporting idiots, and they weren't going to let contradictory details get in the way of that.

> They just took the turn sooner than the British and others.

Because of protests and massive intervention of experts and digital citizens rights group like the CCC.

Luckily, the government listened in this case. I am somewhat amazed how well different sectors of society can suddenly work together when the situation is serious.

Some people should read Germany's manual and picking the worst problem in internal Europe ( Hungary) is no excuse for bad decisions ( UK )

It's the same strategy non-democratic regimes use ( Trump, China, Russia)

It looks like Germany pretty much wrote the manual for a Coronavirus tracking app - https://github.com/corona-warn-app

Reply on news.ycombinator.com