NHS contact-tracing app is best in the world, says VMware CEO... whose company helped build it
- Reference: 1589268609
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/12/vmware_tannzu_nhs_app/
- Source link:
Speaking to [1]Fox Business last week, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger described his company as the “prime partner” for the UK National Health Service’s contact-tracing app.
“I believe they are taking the lead worldwide,” he said. “We have also learned many of the things that were … some of the problems like in Singapore and we have applied them to this solution. So we are very excited this could be the leading light in the world and we are starting to get some interest from other countries around the world as well as a few States in the US.”
“But overall we think this is the best one in the world and we are really thrilled to be working with the NHS and the UK to help bring it about.”
VMware staffers have [2]mentioned the interview and added that the NHS app involves [3]Tanzu , VMware’s collection of Kubernetes management tools. Significant chunks of Tanzu were derived from Pivotal, which VMware recently acquired, and Pivotal is known to have history at the NHS.
Fancy some post-weekend reading? How's this for a potboiler: The source code for UK, Australia's coronavirus contact-tracing apps [4]READ MORE
Tanzu is an effort to improve Kubernetes security, manageability and automation, so VMware’s involvement in the project could suggest that NHS developers are both keen on cloud-native development and wise to the issues it creates.
As they work on the app they may also be able to call on VMware staff working in actual VMware offices. The Register has learned the company is “actively preparing for the gradual and safe reopening of offices after May 17 in locations where government restrictions have eased and the local and global VMware Crisis Management Teams have evaluated the risks in doing so.”
The re-opened offices won’t run at full capacity and attendance won’t be compulsory. “We continue to encourage each employee to make an individual decision on when they are comfortable returning to an office environment,” we were told.
That stance contrasts with Google and Facebook, which have both told their staff to stay at home for the rest of the year. ®
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[1] https://video.foxbusiness.com/v/6155350885001/#sp=show-clips
[2] https://twitter.com/m_germany/status/1259018535357100032
[3] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/05/vmware_tanzu_application_service/
[4] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/09/coronavirus_tracing_app_source_code/
[5] https://go.theregister.co.uk/tl/1936/-8552/how-to-accelerate-brilliant-digital-experiences-with-low-code?td=wptl1936
Decentralised
I'm not sure if I'm missing something somewhere, but if the decentralised versions don't collect personalised data couldn't we have had one global app (or one global system for the apps to present a UI for)?
The current model is interesting while we're all on lockdown, but working on the principle that contact tracing is going to be with us for a while, what happens when people start travelling again? Do you need to install the app for whichever country you're in?
Re: Decentralised
I think the only thing you missed was that it is Governments the world over making them.
Not exactly known for forward thinking are they?
Re: Decentralised
Unfortunately, there are also significant areas where there is a lot of cross-border movement for work, leisure, shopping, etc. Obvious examples are along the Irish border and the Schengen borders in mainland Europe. If these people are invisible to countries other than the one in which they live it's going to seriously degrade the information available to the countries in which they spend a lot of time, so some people may be stuck with multiple battery-draining trackers.
Of course, the jury is largely still out on whether the privacy-respecting approach will be adequate. South Korea has been very successful in containing the virus, but it has been very aggressively using all sorts of personal information such as card transactions and mobile phone data to determine exactly who has been where at any time. There is an argument that if there is only one "privacy focused" app and it fails to deliver sufficient benefits then there will be a public clamour for an immediate pivot to drastically more intrusive measures. At least if there are several attempts, and one works, other countries might have a way out that doesn't involve the South Korea or Israel approach.
Re: Decentralised
Interesting clip on the radio news this morning, Israeli agencies more normally tasked with monitoring Palestinians are now being tasked with tracking Israelis for covid prevention. Some Israelis are objecting to being 'treated like terrorists' (their words, not mine). Might encourage some thoughtful reflection later, probably wont.
Re: couldn't we have had one global app
Of course not. Each country has its own trough and its own snouts that want a piece of the app pie.
So we're all going to replicate each other's efforts and we'll end up with apps that are incompatible between them.
What a great world, eh ?
Re: couldn't we have had one global app
... and under the current UK Emergency Regulations, such work does not have to be put out for competitive tendering and can be awarded to the mates of the Government without any public scrunity,
Wear the mask
It's assumes
** 1 phone = 1 person,
** phone location = person location,
** everyone installs their app,
** everyone has a phone
** the phone is always on
** location is always available (GPS indoors).
** phoneless children don't spread disease
So, yeh, sure it works, if we ignore the basic logic flaws, the best app in the world, says PR man for company that wrote it. Logic doesn't matter does it?
*****
The proof is in the pudding? UK curve is not falling, cases are not dropping off, Austria, look at their Daily New Cases curve, see the sharp decline, almost in the same 2 months as the UK, they're back to near zero:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/austria/
They WORE MASKS. It looks like you're missing the mask thing. WILL YOU PLEASE WEAR THE F*CKING MASKS ALREADY!
******
It seems to me that someone in UK was worried that masks would be in short supply for the NHS, so they cooked up the most ridiculous argument as to why people shouldn't wear masks. It was a bad choice, the better choice would be to tell them how to make their own improvised mask. Now that that person has dug a hole for the UK, with a lot of bodies in it, and they find it difficult to reverse their decision and undo that damage. Not least because they've already planted the idea that masks are bad in people's minds.
Now it will be hard to explain to people that masks are good, after filling their heads with misinformation.
But wear the mask.
Re: Wear the mask
I hate going to the supermarket, people who ware masks seem to think it makes them immune to the social distancing rules, BACK OFF and stop scratching your face where the face mask is making your face itchy!!!
Any face covering will do according to the news item I saw at around 10am on 12/5/2020 on Sky News. I'll watch the news again at 11 and see just how much the information has changed. It'll be something along the lines of 'do wear a mask, unless it's not a mask, in which case make sure you're 2m away from your daughter, unless she's your cleaner, in which case you can see her at your house, without a mask but with alertness'
you cut the bottom off your t shirt and wrap it round your face.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/how-to-wear-and-make-a-cloth-face-covering/how-to-wear-and-make-a-cloth-face-covering
Spring in to NHS?
Can we expect that Pivotal have built the NHS app in Spring Boot?
"We have always been at War ...
... with the Truth."
Why the heck not a UK developed app?
There are numerous companies based and chartered in the UK who have huge mobile expertise that also know the market and understand protecting PII.
Vmware, sod them. Nice company for virtualisation but not know for UX / mobile.
Re: Why the heck not a UK developed app?
Why not a UK company for this app, for PPE, for the NHS system, army tanks, navy aircraft, police cars, ambulances, fire engines? All the same problem. The civil service was educated at Oxbridge, universities that have produced the Russian spies that gave away our secrets. These people loath, decide and hate the UK and the pleas that live here. They hate with such a passion they wish to destroy our economy and jobs.
There is no other explanation, if it was once in a while I would suspect backhanders, but as it is always the same I discount that
80%
The gubbermint have already said that they need 80% of smartphone users to use this app in order for it to be useful. They have also said that their path out of lockdown (let's not call it a roadmap because that's meaningless) relies on contact tracing. However they have also said that if the trials don't go well they may move to a decentralized solution as preferred by South Korea.
The first question to ask is a simple one: If South Korea's solution was successful (and it was) why are we re-inventing the wheel? Developing a new app has taken time and money and it's still not over as the app is still being tested.
So the follow up question would be: Users are required to proactively install an app, however the majority already have software on their phones that is tracing their every movement, why not just talk nicely to the providers of this software and ask them to just spam their users in the UK with a simple opt in prompt, would that not be a simpler solution which would reach a wider audience?
The answers to both these questions would be slightly embarrassing for UK.gov. Being as they are: 1. Dom and his team of "misfits" didn't actually bother looking at how South Korea had achieved things they just went off half cock throwing money at the problem (and surely nobody is suggesting they kept any of it). and 2. Yes.
Unfortunately nobody seems to be asking the questions. Or if they are they are not asking them loudly enough in a public enough forum. I would contact my local MP and suggest a question at PMQs but my new MP is not only a Tory who toes the Boris line in all things, but he is also almost invisible. Unlike our previous MP who was not only very contactable, but also very vocal in representing her constituents.
As for Starmer holding the "government to account" he seems to have one topic where he asks for a path out of lockdown and then when he's given one doesn't seem to be able to think of any intelligent questions.
Nice to see
Nice to see HMG using UK tax payers money to buy software engineering expertise from the UK. What a refreshing change from supporting US companies and paying US engineers the higher salaries they get compared to our own. Who knows it might mean salaries in the UK are increased with increased demand. An increase in salary might mean the jobs are more interesting and attract our yuff to the more difficult STEM subjects.
Oh? What's that? The government hasn't changed and we are still buying foreign as we did with the oh so successful NHS computer system and those wonderful not compliant PPE kits that were partly picked up by the RAF because delivery didn't happen? Oh cool thought for a moment someone with brains and economic nonce had penetrated the civil service.
NHSX proximity tracker v1
A quick search of HMG's Contract Finder page shows the NHSX contracts are all with Zuehlke Engineering (the UK subsidiary of the Swiss company, Zühlke Technology Group AG) so I guess they're using Pivotal / Tanzu expertise on a sub-contract basis.