15,841 positive cases missed

Reported that they were using new version of Excel but were saving it as xls rather than xlsx, which essentially imposed the same limitations.

I mean that's not the problem, but it caused the system to break.

 

In my job I regularly complain that our staff aren't sent on a simple course to be trained. The amount of times I'm asked things like,

"Where's my data gone?"

Answer,

"The column is filtered"

 

I had to recalculate all the student classifications this year due to Covid and the formulas were giving me sleepless nights. We have a central system to check by but because of Covid we couldn't rely on it. I had dreams where I'd given 200+ students the wrong classifications... Horrendous!

 

I've got some real horror stories about messes I had to clear up, one or two of them even of my own making. One at British Steel in the early 90s was particularly horrific but the telecoms stuff was what really got my heart racing - there's just so much data and everything moves so quickly. I'm going to try to stop thinking about it now as it's not good for my health.

 

Apparently Nicola thinks they need to.

 

THe issue was with how PHE format the data from third party contractors who supply the test results The issue was PHES own developers using historic versions of excel.

But otherwise, yes its Sercos fault.

 

Pretty sure PHE would have liked a nice new custom made system, but they only get implemented if Dom's mate get the contract at great expense to the tax payer. So PHE have to make do and mend, which results in this sh*tshow. Not central government's fault in any way then?

 

Whoever secured the contract for Serco for them to get billions of £££ for producing a test and trace system, but was able to make the task of getting data from tests to tracers a PHE problem has played a blinder. I wish they could scope some of my projects.

Maybe they should've put those billions into the NHS to scale up their own testing capacity, lab resources and data reporting tools. Would've been less of a clusterf... and they could've outsourced to the likes of boots etc for very specific areas if needed.

 

Yes its central governments fault that a highly paid developer(s) used an archaic file extension for their data files.

Yes its central governments fault that no one in PHE did any basic checks on the data files to ensure they were complete and accurate. Especially as it would appear than the file uploaded on one of the fault days was blank!

As much as this government is a **** show, the issue with these files has nothing to do with anyone but PHE.

 

One week ago 7.1k new cases reported, now its 14.5k in the last 24 hour.

76 deaths in the last 24 hour.

Patients admitted and patients on life support all jumped up today.

Are we all ready to admit we have a serious problem on our hands again and the current restrictions aren't working?

 

As I said further up this thread I think scientists have over estimated the restrictions ability in the real world to influence the transmission of covid - all that has happened are more rules which are causing now increasing harm with little benefit.

 

Serco have no involvement within the NHS trace and trace App other than supplying contact centre resources. It did not build nor does it run the app.

The app was created by the following organisations: -

Accenture
Alan Turing Institute
NHS Digita
lNHSx
Oxford University
VMware Pivotal Lab
Zuhlke Engineering

Nor is Serco listed as a data controller or processor.

They are however involved in running around 30% of testing centres in turn supplying tests to the 3rd party labs to run. who in turn feed PHE the returns.

 

So what do we do?

Serious question, I am genuinely interested on people's opinions as to the way forward.

For the purpose of this question I'm not wanting 'this should have happened or that should have happened'.

We are where we are, what is route forward and what are the perceived consequences and outcome?

 

At this rate prepare for another national lockdown at half term. It's being floated at the minute in some corners of government

 

Wouldn't surprise me. Would it do any good long term though?

 

Which given that lockdowns dont work. would be a pointless exercise. Technically though they should be putting the suggestion through Parliament for a vote...

 

Voting? That's so last year!

 

I never said they built the app. Maybe I'm tarring Serco with the whole private sector brush. Cash has flown to Serco, Boots, Deloitte etc... but seemingly for each to do their own siloed work, without the investment needed in our healthcare system to come up with a coherent plan for testing and contact tracing. Some poor sod at PHE was probably given a ruckload of data from various sources and not given enough time and money to develop anything at scale.

 

With hospital admissions rising surely it's now time to reopen the Nightingale hospitals purely for covid admissions. Bring in military medics to support where they can. Try and separate general health admissions from the covid intake.

Beyond that I'm at a loss, the mixed messaging and approaches have clearly not improved the situation or the economy.
To make matters worse we've got Brexit in a few weeks. Lorry parks not even got sign off and wont be built until at earliest April. Found that out last week, didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

 

Glad that we are in agreement that this lies with SERCO. Happy days.