On 20/7/20 8:06 pm, Kim Holburn wrote:
> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/20/cheap-popular-and-it-works-irelands-contact-tracing-app-success
>> Cheap, popular and it works: Ireland's contact-tracing app success
Even The Guardian has caught the daft disease.
Repeat after me:
1. An app doesn't work just because people download it
2. It could work if it had solid foundations in physics, logic and
practicality
3. It would be likely to work if it was lab-tested and pilot-tested
4. It would be known to work if the deployment was metricated, so that
genuine numbers were delivered from the field, and they showed it
was accurate enough, and delivered usable and useful data
5. None of 2., 3. and 4. are true, for Ireland's CovidTracker or
for the Aust govt's COVIDsafe / sunscreen tool
See various, incl.
http://www.rogerclarke.com/EC/EBPA.html (30 Apr)
http://www.rogerclarke.com/EC/CSAF.html ( 1 May)
<sigh>
_______________
>> Irish-made app has more than 1.3m downloads, in stark contrast to the UK’s
>> efforts
>>
>> Mon 20 Jul 2020 15.00 AEST
>>
>> Ireland’s Health Service Executive director general Paul Reid, health
>> minister Stephen Donnelly and acting chief medical officer Dr Ronan Glynn
>> launching Covid Tracker on 7 July.
>> (Left to right): Health Service Executive director general Paul Reid, health
>> minister Stephen Donnelly and acting chief medical officer Dr Ronan Glynn
>> launching Covid Tracker on 7 July. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA
>>
>> A government minister once compared Ireland’s health care system to Angola –
>> a political minefield of dysfunction, bureaucracy, waste and inefficiency.
>> The nickname stuck.
>>
>> Yet this morass has just produced a shiny success: a Covid-19
>> contact-tracing app that is popular and appears to work.
>>
>> Since launching on 6 July, the Covid Tracker app was downloaded 1.3m times
>> in eight days – the fastest-downloaded app per capita in Europe – and has
>> started picking up cases of infection.
>>
>> “We’ve been delighted by the take-up rate. It’s gone beyond the initial
>> hopes,” said Colm Harte, the technical director of NearForm, the company
>> that made the app for the Health Service Executive (HSE).
>>
>> The app uses a phone’s Bluetooth signal to exchange a digital handshake with
>> another device also running the app when users come within 2 metres of each
>> other for more than 15 minutes. The anonymous keys are stored in a log on
>> the phone, which health authorities may ask users to upload if they are
>> diagnosed with Covid-19. The log can then be used to track unnamed contacts,
>> who are alerted about possible infection.
>>
>> NearForm made a similar app for Gibraltar, which launched last month, and
>> one for Northern Ireland, due to launch within weeks. “It’s the same core
>> platform. It’s built on the Irish solution,” said Harte.
>>
>> “An Irish solution to an Irish problem” is a derisive term in Ireland for
>> attempted fixes that are daft or quixotic. In this case, though, there seems
>> no need for self-deprecation.
>>
>> Ireland has made a tool against the pandemic not only for Ireland but for
>> part of the UK and for a British overseas territory – while Britain
>> flounders in its own attempt to produce an app.
>>
>> The NHS Covid-19 app was meant to roll out in England in May. That slipped
>> to June. Last month, officials ditched the app in its original form and
>> backed an alternative designed by Apple and Google. The government said it
>> might launch in winter.
>> Guardian Today: the headlines, the analysis, the debate - sent direct to you
>> Read more
>>
>> The Irish are not crowing. Authorities originally hoped to launch the app in
>> March, only to encounter complications. And its effectiveness remains
>> unclear. “It still has to prove its mettle,” said Seán L’Estrange, a social
>> scientist at University College Dublin who has studied tracing.
>>
>> Even so, the take-up rate is impressive, said L’Estrange. “What that shows
>> is the credibility of the app, the confidence in the initiative, and the
>> enthusiasm for participating in the collective project to contain the virus.”
>>
>> The €850,000 (£773,000) price tag is “dirt cheap” given that the average
>> cost of identifying each case of infection is €42,000, said L’Estrange.
>> “Even if it fails to produce the goods, little has been lost.”
>>
>> This suggests Ireland’s health system, plagued in normal times by bloated
>> management, turf battles and duplication, can do well in a crisis.
>>
>> “The whole of the organisation attuned itself and focused on coronavirus,”
>> said Fran Thompson, a HSE spokesperson. The pandemic allowed the HSE to
>> shortcut the regular tender process and select NearForm in mid-March. “It
>> probably saved six to eight weeks,” said Thompson.
>>
>> NearForm employs 150 people and builds software mostly for private clients.
>> It is based in a former council office in Tramore, a seaside town in County
>> Waterford, but has international pedigree, with developers scattered across
>> 21 countries. Clients include Condé Nast, Intel and Microsoft.
>>
>> Following Singapore’s lead, NearForm’s developers raced to build a
>> centralised app that used smartphones’ Bluetooth connectivity to trace
>> people who come into close contact with infected people.
>>
>> By April, they had a version but were struggling with Bluetooth. It worked
>> with Android but Apple’s iPhone operating system sent apps to sleep when
>> unused and Bluetooth could not activate them.
>>
>> “We quickly hit the same problems as other countries,” said Harte. A
>> centralised system also raised alarms about storing data and breaching
>> privacy.
>>
>> Then Apple and Google came together and offered an app that would support
>> public health apps and let Android and iOS phones connect even while locked.
>> Their decentralised version held no data in a single official database,
>> alleviating privacy concerns.
>>
>> The Irish were among the first to grasp Silicon Valley’s offer in late
>> April. “We got in early and it was full steam ahead. It allowed us to move
>> on,” said Harte.
>>
>> Britain, meanwhile, persisted with attempts to make a customised app until
>> last month when it made a U-turn and embraced the model preferred by Apple
>> and Google.
>
>
--
Roger Clarke mailto:roger.cla...@xamax.com.au
T: +61 2 6288 6916 http://www.xamax.com.au http://www.rogerclarke.com
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law University of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor in Computer Science Australian National University
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