Rather tangential, but I wonder what percent of people in the USA are computer literate? Here in the "third world" (Ecuador), many, many people who use the internet almost constantly have never touched a "computer". For them, a computer is an Android phone.
On Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 6:35 PM Barry MacKichan < barry.mackic...@mackichan.com> wrote: > When the healthcare.gov fiasco was going on, I was trying repeatedly to > refill my Starbucks card using their web site. I thought it would be > interesting to see which site would be running correctly first. I don’t > know which was first but it was close — it wasn’t a slam dunk win for > private enterprise over government. > > I remember when building an online store with a shopping cart was a big > deal in the ‘90s. Now building these sites is like playing with tinker toys. > > I can see a lot more work needed that will never be seen from the public’s > side of the system. The 50,000 sites will not be constant. Some new ones > will come, and some will go. Hospitals, public health departments, > independent as well as chain pharmacies have to feed information into the > system. How do they pass that information? How do they prove they are not > a hacker and have the authority to change hours, capacity, availability of > vaccine, location, etc. Are there mechanisms for weeding out defunct and > out-of-date vaccination sites? The problems getting up-to-date and accurate > numbers for COVID tests, deaths, ICU usage, etc., demonstrate this is not > trivial. > > The system for entering the data has to be built, has to be secure, and > thousands of people (eg, pharmacy staff) who want to do something else will > have to be trained and the technical support team for the vaccinator > entities as well as for the general public needs to be up to speed. > > Also, it is easy for us to assume computer literacy which may not exist > for some parts of the population. Back in the ‘80s, our support people had > conversations (with mathematicians, economists, and their students!) like: > > Support person: “Now copy the highlighted text to the clipboard” > Support person: <long pause> Hello? > User: “I’ve looked all over. My computer doesn’t have a clipboard!” > > My guess is that about 20% of the population is still at that level, and > the need to be supported. > > And Murphy will be in the wings, watching carefully. > > > Sent from my iPa > > > On Mar 13, 2021, at 1:06 PM, Prof David West <profw...@fastmail.fm> > wrote: > > > > Biden promised a Federal Website to give citizens easy an accurate > access to vaccination appointments. Fully operational May 1, date that all > Americans wishing a vaccine/vaccination will be able to obtain one. > > > > Assume 50,000 vaccination sites, 50, 15-minute, time slots per day and, > at that time, a maximum of 150 million clients. > > > > There are several people on this list who, I believe, could build this > Website over the course of a weekend, including UE (user experience) > elements like Google Maps for site locations, and install it on a cloud > server for volume scaling/descaling. Allow a month to collect data - the > only thing really problematic is a list of sites, addresses, and > operational hours (to constrain the daily calendar slots). > > > > Total cost: < $25,000 ($500 hr - you folks deserve this pay rate - for > 40-50 hours) > > > > Now the wager: I bet that the feds will contract with a major software > development corporation for development. Contract will be in the range of 5 > and 10 million dollars; there is a 50% chance the site will be late or > deployed with partial functionality; there is a 20% chance that it will be > as dramatic a failure upon debut as was the healthcare.gov site. > > > > Risk is two beverages of your/my choice — payable when next we can share > a physical presence. > > > > davew > > > > > > > > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ >
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