The failed rollout of Britain's covid-19 app were the result of clear errors
technologyreview.com
technologyreview.com
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-...
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families...
https://www.henricodolfing.com/2019/01/case-study-10-billion...
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.
The app has to actually work for a high enough proportion fo cases, though.
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.
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.
Whether that is enough protection is a fair debate.
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/security-behind-nhs-contac...
I think part of the problem with it is that the beginning is a bit of a long winded intro, but the technical details later are really good.
Google has 7,000 people working on maps, Apple has 4,000 people working on maps, is it really possible that a few app developers assembled by the tories (who have a track record of failure and lies) have stumbled upon a more accurate way to calculate the distance between devices than the 11,000 people that work on these problems full-time have ever managed?
If this was really a benefit, I'd expect the journalist would have been briefed on the beneficial outcome of the data analysis, rather than just "more data analysis".
The NHSX app tried to do too much — trying to collect centralised data when one key function didn't need to be centralised was always going to be an issue when trying to get people to install it in large numbers.
Smaller samples are enough for population surveys, while high percentages are needed for the track and trace function. Mixing up the two into one app has doomed this project.
Seems a pretty clearly spelt out to me.
Doesn't it mean: there just aren't enough tests for this to be worthwhile?
[Edited to add: I re-read the article and - yes, it means there is not enough testing capacity. Limiting case detection to the number of tests you have available is absolutely not a benefit, unless you are a government trying to obscure the truth, perhaps]
Also, it's not just tests that are short, but contact tracing resources. Basically, when you shut down a business or location due to an outbreak, you want to be as precise and accurate as possible - to do otherwise will cost the affected too much, and they'll start to ignore the contact tracing system entirely.
We'll probably never know now if there was an actual benefit to the NHS's proposal, but it seemed at least plausible.
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...
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."
EDIT: missed it had to be turned on... Thanks for the replies. Fingers crossed we get something that uses it ASAP.
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.
I live in germany, where the app is already released -- the settings panel shows a list of installed apps that use the API, but the app is responsible for the synchronization of the randomIDs with the server, notifications, etc.
The exact same functionality could be highly misused by a popular flappy-bird type app that tricks people into installing it.
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.
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-des...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8416475/Boris-Johns...
https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-russia-report-...
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.
Even if the contract was awarded unfairly through the old boy’s network, the intention was still for it to work.
Not sure why you would think that. I've worked in government before and seen contracts awarded to companies that had no chance of completing them. The intention was invariably to line a friend's pockets and book lots of consulting hours.
Some more context to this: England already has an excellent system for track and trace. Not for covid-19, we fucked that up. But for sexual health we have excellent work being done across the country by public health departments. These were split off from the NHS some time ago, and now they're funded by local authorities so they're struggling to cope with over a decade of austerity. But it's still a weird decision to not make use of that expertise and pull Harding in. Her work at NHS Improvement[1] is good, but she's had very little contact with public health work.
[1] Now NHS England + Improvement
None of this sounds like public health driven leadership to me:
- Hancock's test target was miraculously hit - bending his own rules to boost the figures (and wasting thousands of testing kits in the process)
- Dido Harding trumpeted as a tech heavyweight brought in to deliver a futuristic solution - despite famously claiming after her company's massive data breach "It wasn't encrypted, nor are you legally required to encrypt it. We have complied with all of our legal obligations in terms of storing of financial information.", and sitting on the board of the Cheltenham Festival which opened it's doors to 260,000 people just days before lockdown.
- Dominic Cummings publicly supported by all senior government politicians for breaking the public health guidelines they created
- Rebranding the coronavirus messaging without consulting the behaviourhal psychologists on the governement's own SAGE committee - resulting in unaccessible unactionable nonsense
etc. etc.
The NHS "centralised" app would have worked and worked fine IF they could have made the Bluetooth feature it relied on work properly. But this was always going to be impossible given what every mobile app developer already knows about the platforms. Whilst the NHSX app did have some ingenious ideas in it - it was not enough to get around the platform limitations enough to provide a working solution.
The only reason I can think they were pressing ahead was to collect all the extra data that this approach would have yielded (if it was actually going to work - which it wasn't).