8 ms·

Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

312 points by donaltroddyn 6y ago

papower 6y ago
The "worlds most famous" claim is from the website and not the poster
- donaltroddyn 6y ago
  I wasn't sure whether to remove that as a gratuitous adjective. Even without that claim, it's an interesting development, especially as the app cost only €850k. 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 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53095336 The code is already up on GitHub: https://github.com/HSEIreland https://github.com/HSEIreland
  - Sephiroth87 6y ago
    I wouldn't put the focus on it being ONLY 850k, that seems a competent price, I would really like to know how in the world they spent 11M on the uk one...
    - ericlewis 6y ago
      this is the first I have learned about its price, and I will say- that seems about right given the resources.
    - addicted 6y ago
      That’s like 4 SV devs working a year. And just in salaries, not including payroll taxes, office space, admins, QAs, etc. 850k sounds eminently reasonable for such an undertaking in such a short period of time.
      - Sephiroth87 6y ago
        That's what I'm saying, it's the 11M that's not reasonable...
        addicted44 6y ago
        I wasn't intending on disputing your statement but merely adding to it. Apologies if it came across that way.
      - ericlewis 6y ago
        We had a team of great devs and designers who worked on this. What most would consider “par for the course” in relation to an MVP startup for instance.
    - Someone 6y ago
      I don’t know specifics about the UK version, but most of those costs likely weren’t on the app proper. They did run a field test, for example. For comparison, the German version cost millions, too. That included multi-language support, setting up help lines, security evaluation, load testing millions of concurrent users and, IIRC, connecting to quite a few of different hospital computer systems. Add in time pressure, and costs go up. Germany did get a quality system, judging by what the spokesman for the Chaos Computer Club said (paraphrasing: ‘we have the unfamiliar problem that there is so little to complain about’. They never endorse stuff, so that’s about as endorsing as their statements can get)
      - donaltroddyn 6y ago
        It also includes the DPIA, which in itself can be an expensive process. There was a lot of concern/press in Ireland pre-release about the privacy implications of the app. It's hot on the heels of a "mandatory but not compulsory" national ID card fiasco that was determined to be unlawful by the privacy regulator last year: https://www.thejournal.ie/psc-no-legal-basis-4766822-Aug2019/ https://www.thejournal.ie/psc-no-legal-basis-4766822-Aug2019...
        ericlewis 6y ago
        You’re not wrong.
      - ericlewis 6y ago
        We ran a field test too. But again; I probably can’t talk about that much. Sorry. If you have more in depth technical questions I might be able to answer them.
  - ericlewis 6y ago
    I worked on this project a bit and have a deep understanding of how it went about, though, I am not sure how much I can talk about that. 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.
    - Kinrany 6y ago
      Is this HN-speak for "it was a clusterfuck and there were too many stakeholders with incompatible requirements"?
      - IncRnd 6y ago
        It sounded like the opposite of what you wrote.
        Kinrany 6y ago
        Yes, but given the previous phrase: > I am not sure how much I can talk about that it genuinely seemed like it might be a way to list the problems without saying that there were problems. I'm sorry that it seemed like I'm attacking the GP. I did not intend to, but I also knowingly ignored this interpretation, because wording is hard
        ericlewis 6y ago
        I didn’t mean it that way, I’m just not sure how much I could talk about it. For one, because I was involved but only so much. And two, because it’s not really my thing to talk about per se. As for problems, not really any problems. It was quite straight forward. I’m just not sure my company would appreciate me speaking on their behalf about details. Edit: but I can answer like, general technical details and things like that.
      - a_paddy 6y ago
        You can check the GitHub but it looks like there were only a max of 3 devs involved https://github.com/hseireland/ https://github.com/hseireland/
  - drcongo 6y ago
    Beautiful trolling Ireland, bravo!
- messe 6y ago
  It says worlds most successful, which I presume is referring to the fact that nearly 30% of the population with compatible devices have downloaded it. EDIT: added the 'with compatabile devices' disclaimer
  - ponker 6y ago
    That’s a little misleading though because the percentage of people who install the country’s contact tracing app is driven much more by the quality of the people than the quality of the app. So this app might be garbage, I don’t think this statistic says much one way or the other.
    - justinclift 6y ago
      > the percentage of people who install the country’s contact tracing app is driven much more by the quality of the people That sounds strange. Explain more?
      - albatross 6y ago
        You could write the cleanest, most bug-free and user-friendly app, release it in the US, and likely never see this level of adoption (I believe is the point that is being made here).
      - adrianmonk 6y ago
        So far it seems like a given country/jurisdiction standardizes on one app for everyone to use. (In theory, apps could be interoperable, but I don't know of this having happened.) So, the citizens' choice isn't between one app and another app. It is only whether or not to use the app that has been chosen for them. Therefore, their choice doesn't tell you much about the quality of the app. The primary driver of the decision is whether or not they're willing to take steps to fight the disease. It's similar to being served dinner on an airplane with only one meal option. They bring you the food, and you either eat it or you don't. The choice doesn't tell you much about whether the food was good. It's more of a reflection of whether you were hungry. The only thing it tells you about food quality is that it (if you eat it) it was somewhere between barely acceptable and excellent.
marvion 6y ago
Isn't this just a meaningless ad? 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. ?
- donaltroddyn 6y ago
  It is PR - maybe I should have linked to the HSE's press release: https://www.hse.ie/eng/services/news/media/pressrel/covid-tracker-ireland-app-one-of-linux-foundation-public-health-s-first-open-source-projects.html https://www.hse.ie/eng/services/news/media/pressrel/covid-tr... 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.
cj 6y ago
Where has a contact tracing app been successfully deployed at a large scale? Have those places seen any positive effect? 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.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  Large-scale deployments in Ireland (1.4 million out of 4.9 million people) and Germany (12 million out of 80 million people), anyway. In Ireland it has lead to the discovery of a number of positive cases, which is positive; if they'd been discovered at all through conventional means that would have taken longer and the people concerned could have been spreading it for longer. 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.
  - tannhaeuser 6y ago
    German app downloads have just passed 16 million [1]. Or do you mean including those who deinstalled it because it was boring ;? [1]: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1125951/umfrage/downloads-der-corona-warn-app/ https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1125951/umfra...
    - rsynnott 6y ago
      Ah, no, last numbers I saw were about 12m and it seemed to have slowed down a bit. That's good news!
  - tester756 6y ago
    > In Ireland it has lead to the discovery of a number of positive cases, How many?
- cameldrv 6y ago
  The Chinese Health Code app has been extremely widely deployed and has probably contributed significantly to containment. I’m not sure how much has been written about exactly how it works though.
quonn 6y ago
In Germany the app was developed by research institutes. Then canceled. Then SAP picked it up and charged 10 million Euros for what is essentially a few 1000 lines of UI code. The German Telekom got the same amount, just „because“ and will additionally charge 2-3 million per month mostly for the hotline (with limited capacity). 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.
- johannes1234321 6y ago
  Nope, it's not 1000 lines of UI code. It is a project with lots of pressure (timeline, politics, ...) and two years of maintenance. Including two apps (iOS and Android) multiple Backend systems and a concept, project management (coordination between government, testing laboratories, ...) looking at the team size (educated guess based on GitHub stats) the hourly rate is on the higher side, but it's still low for a government contract and in case it has effect (which is still not proven) peanuts compared to the financial cost of COVID.
  - quonn 6y ago
    I said a few 1000 and I actually browsed the code on Github when it came out. 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.)
    - tlarkworthy 6y ago
      20M for the boost of Germany's worldwide status is a drop in the ocean. The money was well spent, Germany did not embarrass themselves by penny pinching. It needed to work, and it appears to. Compare this to the UK who is still flapping around.
donohoe 6y ago
Is there an actual contact tracing app for the US or any US states yet?
- rusk 6y ago
  This one is being used in a few US states according to TFA
- onionjake 6y ago
  Utah released one pretty early on (maybe April or May IIRC)? I think I heard recently they might be shuttering it because of lack of downloads.
  - salakotolu 6y ago
    The app failed to gain significant adoption. I believe it no longer trace's contacts.
leommoore 6y ago
This pandemic is global so anything that helps countries to combat the virus is a good thing. The Irish app seems pretty good but the great thing about open source is that you can branch it to make your own app or just use the code to learn how others resolved the technical issues associated with creating a decentralized contact tracing app. 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.
shintakezou 6y ago
It seems something like a trojan horse in some core concept about freedom and privacy. It also helps, I am sure.
throwawaymanbot 6y ago
wow, such negativity for a good deed.. People get a grip.
tester756 6y ago
I've heard opinion that those apps are _not insanely successful_ project Even despite having milions downloaded copies, then it wasn't "broadcasting" a lot of keys https://ctt.pfstr.de/ https://ctt.pfstr.de/ Can someone say something about this? how valid this on?

312 points by donaltroddyn 6y ago

papower 6y ago

The "worlds most famous" claim is from the website and not the poster

donaltroddyn 6y ago
I wasn't sure whether to remove that as a gratuitous adjective. Even without that claim, it's an interesting development, especially as the app cost only €850k. 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 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53095336 The code is already up on GitHub: https://github.com/HSEIreland https://github.com/HSEIreland
- Sephiroth87 6y ago
  I wouldn't put the focus on it being ONLY 850k, that seems a competent price, I would really like to know how in the world they spent 11M on the uk one...
  - ericlewis 6y ago
    this is the first I have learned about its price, and I will say- that seems about right given the resources.
  - addicted 6y ago
    That’s like 4 SV devs working a year. And just in salaries, not including payroll taxes, office space, admins, QAs, etc. 850k sounds eminently reasonable for such an undertaking in such a short period of time.
    - Sephiroth87 6y ago
      That's what I'm saying, it's the 11M that's not reasonable...
      - addicted44 6y ago
        I wasn't intending on disputing your statement but merely adding to it. Apologies if it came across that way.
    - ericlewis 6y ago
      We had a team of great devs and designers who worked on this. What most would consider “par for the course” in relation to an MVP startup for instance.
  - Someone 6y ago
    I don’t know specifics about the UK version, but most of those costs likely weren’t on the app proper. They did run a field test, for example. For comparison, the German version cost millions, too. That included multi-language support, setting up help lines, security evaluation, load testing millions of concurrent users and, IIRC, connecting to quite a few of different hospital computer systems. Add in time pressure, and costs go up. Germany did get a quality system, judging by what the spokesman for the Chaos Computer Club said (paraphrasing: ‘we have the unfamiliar problem that there is so little to complain about’. They never endorse stuff, so that’s about as endorsing as their statements can get)
    - donaltroddyn 6y ago
      It also includes the DPIA, which in itself can be an expensive process. There was a lot of concern/press in Ireland pre-release about the privacy implications of the app. It's hot on the heels of a "mandatory but not compulsory" national ID card fiasco that was determined to be unlawful by the privacy regulator last year: https://www.thejournal.ie/psc-no-legal-basis-4766822-Aug2019/ https://www.thejournal.ie/psc-no-legal-basis-4766822-Aug2019...
      - ericlewis 6y ago
        You’re not wrong.
    - ericlewis 6y ago
      We ran a field test too. But again; I probably can’t talk about that much. Sorry. If you have more in depth technical questions I might be able to answer them.
- ericlewis 6y ago
  I worked on this project a bit and have a deep understanding of how it went about, though, I am not sure how much I can talk about that. 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.
  - Kinrany 6y ago
    Is this HN-speak for "it was a clusterfuck and there were too many stakeholders with incompatible requirements"?
    - IncRnd 6y ago
      It sounded like the opposite of what you wrote.
      - Kinrany 6y ago
        Yes, but given the previous phrase: > I am not sure how much I can talk about that it genuinely seemed like it might be a way to list the problems without saying that there were problems. I'm sorry that it seemed like I'm attacking the GP. I did not intend to, but I also knowingly ignored this interpretation, because wording is hard
        ericlewis 6y ago
        I didn’t mean it that way, I’m just not sure how much I could talk about it. For one, because I was involved but only so much. And two, because it’s not really my thing to talk about per se. As for problems, not really any problems. It was quite straight forward. I’m just not sure my company would appreciate me speaking on their behalf about details. Edit: but I can answer like, general technical details and things like that.
    - a_paddy 6y ago
      You can check the GitHub but it looks like there were only a max of 3 devs involved https://github.com/hseireland/ https://github.com/hseireland/
- drcongo 6y ago
  Beautiful trolling Ireland, bravo!
messe 6y ago
It says worlds most successful, which I presume is referring to the fact that nearly 30% of the population with compatible devices have downloaded it. EDIT: added the 'with compatabile devices' disclaimer
- ponker 6y ago
  That’s a little misleading though because the percentage of people who install the country’s contact tracing app is driven much more by the quality of the people than the quality of the app. So this app might be garbage, I don’t think this statistic says much one way or the other.
  - justinclift 6y ago
    > the percentage of people who install the country’s contact tracing app is driven much more by the quality of the people That sounds strange. Explain more?
    - albatross 6y ago
      You could write the cleanest, most bug-free and user-friendly app, release it in the US, and likely never see this level of adoption (I believe is the point that is being made here).
    - adrianmonk 6y ago
      So far it seems like a given country/jurisdiction standardizes on one app for everyone to use. (In theory, apps could be interoperable, but I don't know of this having happened.) So, the citizens' choice isn't between one app and another app. It is only whether or not to use the app that has been chosen for them. Therefore, their choice doesn't tell you much about the quality of the app. The primary driver of the decision is whether or not they're willing to take steps to fight the disease. It's similar to being served dinner on an airplane with only one meal option. They bring you the food, and you either eat it or you don't. The choice doesn't tell you much about whether the food was good. It's more of a reflection of whether you were hungry. The only thing it tells you about food quality is that it (if you eat it) it was somewhere between barely acceptable and excellent.

marvion 6y ago

Isn't this just a meaningless ad? 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. ?

donaltroddyn 6y ago
It is PR - maybe I should have linked to the HSE's press release: https://www.hse.ie/eng/services/news/media/pressrel/covid-tracker-ireland-app-one-of-linux-foundation-public-health-s-first-open-source-projects.html https://www.hse.ie/eng/services/news/media/pressrel/covid-tr... 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.

cj 6y ago

Where has a contact tracing app been successfully deployed at a large scale? Have those places seen any positive effect? 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.

rsynnott 6y ago
Large-scale deployments in Ireland (1.4 million out of 4.9 million people) and Germany (12 million out of 80 million people), anyway. In Ireland it has lead to the discovery of a number of positive cases, which is positive; if they'd been discovered at all through conventional means that would have taken longer and the people concerned could have been spreading it for longer. 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.
- tannhaeuser 6y ago
  German app downloads have just passed 16 million [1]. Or do you mean including those who deinstalled it because it was boring ;? [1]: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1125951/umfrage/downloads-der-corona-warn-app/ https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1125951/umfra...
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    Ah, no, last numbers I saw were about 12m and it seemed to have slowed down a bit. That's good news!
- tester756 6y ago
  > In Ireland it has lead to the discovery of a number of positive cases, How many?
cameldrv 6y ago
The Chinese Health Code app has been extremely widely deployed and has probably contributed significantly to containment. I’m not sure how much has been written about exactly how it works though.

quonn 6y ago

In Germany the app was developed by research institutes. Then canceled. Then SAP picked it up and charged 10 million Euros for what is essentially a few 1000 lines of UI code. The German Telekom got the same amount, just „because“ and will additionally charge 2-3 million per month mostly for the hotline (with limited capacity). 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.

johannes1234321 6y ago
Nope, it's not 1000 lines of UI code. It is a project with lots of pressure (timeline, politics, ...) and two years of maintenance. Including two apps (iOS and Android) multiple Backend systems and a concept, project management (coordination between government, testing laboratories, ...) looking at the team size (educated guess based on GitHub stats) the hourly rate is on the higher side, but it's still low for a government contract and in case it has effect (which is still not proven) peanuts compared to the financial cost of COVID.
- quonn 6y ago
  I said a few 1000 and I actually browsed the code on Github when it came out. 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.)
  - tlarkworthy 6y ago
    20M for the boost of Germany's worldwide status is a drop in the ocean. The money was well spent, Germany did not embarrass themselves by penny pinching. It needed to work, and it appears to. Compare this to the UK who is still flapping around.

donohoe 6y ago

Is there an actual contact tracing app for the US or any US states yet?

rusk 6y ago
This one is being used in a few US states according to TFA
onionjake 6y ago
Utah released one pretty early on (maybe April or May IIRC)? I think I heard recently they might be shuttering it because of lack of downloads.
- salakotolu 6y ago
  The app failed to gain significant adoption. I believe it no longer trace's contacts.

leommoore 6y ago

This pandemic is global so anything that helps countries to combat the virus is a good thing. The Irish app seems pretty good but the great thing about open source is that you can branch it to make your own app or just use the code to learn how others resolved the technical issues associated with creating a decentralized contact tracing app. 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.

shintakezou 6y ago

It seems something like a trojan horse in some core concept about freedom and privacy. It also helps, I am sure.

throwawaymanbot 6y ago

wow, such negativity for a good deed.. People get a grip.

tester756 6y ago

I've heard opinion that those apps are _not insanely successful_ project Even despite having milions downloaded copies, then it wasn't "broadcasting" a lot of keys https://ctt.pfstr.de/ https://ctt.pfstr.de/ Can someone say something about this? how valid this on?