So the total cost will be 50-100 millions. Despite the fact that most technical work was already done by Apple and Google for free.
I‘m not even talking about the fact that my dad got a new phone to run it - sold by T-Mobile (Telekom) of course.
And hardly anyone complained.
Plus, I just don't understand all the NIH. Why isn't this kind of stuff being developed in one place and then forked by the respective countries instead of everyone creating their own tiny island?
That said, I don't have any major gripes with how the code turned out, just with the cost.
When I checked the actual Swift code was just a bit less than 10k.
The backend apps are fairly small Spring boot apps.
There was a messy attempt before (not finished in time at all) and they fixed and finished that attempt.
One could build 100 apps with server code and docs with that money, and still have a few million left over for hookers and blow.
Stop defending corruption.
There were just six weeks to develop it.
And the concepts where developed before by public research institutes for a tiny fraction of that price (not included).
(If you insist, here is a small calculation. Let‘s say we charge a whopping 500 Euros per hour per engineer. In other words an engineer that costs 1 million per year. And we have 6 weeks time which was all they had. And let’s take 20 people for that. And let‘s add 500.000 for some overhead. Then that‘s still just about 3 million. And I‘ve used insane numbers for a product that trivial.)
I could do that in a weekend! http://danluu.com/sounds-easy/
That‘s like the cost of 1-2 weeks of testing.
But it‘s silly to argue that just because something necessary costs a lot we can disregard all other costs.
For 50 million you can build a school.
Sure, Germany can afford it. But the cost is ridiculously high.
From everything I've read, this kind of app 1) is only really useful if enough people actively use it, and 2) have serious issues with false positives because of inherent positional inaccuracy (or inability to be accurate without sucking battery).
In regards to 1, in my country at least, unless using the app would be mandatory, I know many more people who will refuse to use it or be too lazy to use it. And I'm pretty sure hell will freeze over before the government can make usage (and owning a smartphone) mandatory.
These apps would, granted, be far less useful in places with major ongoing outbreaks and inadequate testing infrastructure; lockdowns should be used to bring numbers down to the level where this sort of thing is workable.
(1) is probably a greater problem. Ireland has about 30% uptake, which probably isn't enough.
Relative to other COVID-related economic damage this is peanuts. It's acceptable to throw a few tens of millions at a wall and hope that something sticks.
> The German government says its app cost 20 million euros ($22.7 million) to develop and will require 2.5 million to 3.5 million euros per month to operate. It’s available in German and English, with Turkish and other languages to follow.
Legally I believe the government is required to answer that, even though it already seems they're trying to weasel themselves out of it.
Why was it canceled?
Research institutes are typically funded through contract grants, where you as a principle investigator are supposed to be using the money for a research project. Obviously there are exceptions, but if you want to make a large name for yourself in academia, doing maintenance projects isn't the way to get yourself promoted; all the flashy rewards are in publishing novel cutting edge ideas in high ranking journal.
I am not an expert on how things are in Germany, but if they're anything similar to the US experience, I'm not surprised at all that they would fail due to the misaligned incentives.
The company is part of the development. Afaik many apps are open source. "Donating it" means offloading the support and profit from Linux Foundations status.
Nearform is involved in integrating the backend into the countries health system... so they offload the app and just do the work that gets paid well. ?
The app has been open sourced by the Irish Government, not Nearform who were the developers. The copyright is owned by the HSE (the Irish public health authority).
The app being open source does benefit Nearform, though, as they can sell their services customising the app for other governments.
Apple/Google's APIs were widely discussed a couple months ago, but (at least in the US) it seems to have fallen off everyone's radar.
There has also been successful deployments in Taiwan and Singapore, but AIUI they don't use the Apple/Google API and are far more intrusive.
[1]: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1125951/umfra...
How many?
Here's a study with some data on it: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/10/20-1315_article
New Yorker article that's older but adds some color: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/seouls-radical-expe...
I think there is an additional confusion though. This is really an exposure notification app. If you used only this, and not traditional contact tracing, you would have to have a lot of adoption. But I think the general recommendation is to use both (1) these exposure notification applications and (2) traditional contact tracing by people trained to do it. Then you don't need as large an adoption to get utility. Traditional contact tracing can be effective, especially for people you know you contacted. But it is slow, and does not handle well the people you don't know. By combining them, there is a greater odd of notifying those who may be potentially infected. As long as you're also doing traditional contact tracing and other measures, a lower adoption rate for these applications can still be valuable.
Full disclosure, I work for the Linux Foundation. But I still believe this anyway :-).
I released a blog post (10min read) this past weekend breaking down digital contact tracing in the U.S. I also discussed why Google and Apple's solution isn't sufficient.
https://tolusnotes.com/state-of-digital-contact-tracing-in-t...
https://developer.apple.com/contact/request/download/Exposur... gives you that reason:
“In order to use the Exposure Notification APIs, You must be a government entity, such as a government health services organization, or a developer who has been endorsed and approved by a government entity to develop an Application on behalf of a government for COVID-19 response efforts. Entitlement Profile(s) are limited to one (1) Application per country unless the country has a regional approach, or as otherwise agreed by Apple.”
Of course an app is not a panacea but as developers we can't create vaccines or provide medical assistance. Its not perfect, as it depends on getting enough people to use it. No mean feat when there are people who don't even believe Covid exists or think it is only dangerous to older people and don't want to take any precautions like wear masks or socially distance. Even then, there are lots of technical challenges trying to use a technology like Bluetooth for a purpose for which it was never intended.
There will be a vaccine at some point (plenty of anti-vaccine people too, which might be a problem for the future) and there will be better treatments in the medium term but right now, speed is important and if it helps States to save time and get a contact tracing app quickly then it has to be a good thing. That way we are all safer.
Even despite having milions downloaded copies, then it wasn't "broadcasting" a lot of keys
Can someone say something about this? how valid this on?
In contrast, our nearest neighbour scrapped their app last month after spending over £11MM (~€12MM) and are now rebuilding on the Apple/Google API: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53095336
The code is already up on GitHub: https://github.com/HSEIreland
edit: I guess what can be said was it was a highly efficient project, and there weren't so many fingers in the development pot so to say.
EDIT: added the 'with compatabile devices' disclaimer
Meanwhile, Play Store says India's Covid tracing app was downloaded by more than 100 million+ people.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nic.goi.aarogy...
