Month: March 2021

Shitty software kills people

How the public healthcare system in Italy is using software to support the vaccination effort is appaling.

I’ve spent a good part of the last 30 years trying to convince people that software is important. Of course I was mostly trying to sell something, but I do believe that software is perhaps the most effective leverage homo sapiens has ever created, an incredibly effective multiplier of effort, especially since computers have been connected to a global network.

And while this has been widely understood all around the world for a relatively long time (to put things in perspective, this blog is 19 years old today), decision makers in Italy have never taken this seriously.

Yes, there have been forever companies controlled by the public administration, dedicated to creating software for its citizens, but they have always been a joke. Just huge organisations, filled with mostly mediocre people, with politically nominated leadership which would change at every election.

They have never been able to produce anything even remotely decent: just old technology, hardly working and unusable, simply projecting a bit further the horrible and mind numbing bureaucracy of the state.

Now this software is killing people.

Because while we are locked down and in the middle of a pandemic, after years and years of development, of citizen portals, of centralized booking systems, of call centres, of digitised clinical records, if you think you are at risk and you want to get vaccinated you have to download a bloody pdf.

Then you have to print it.

You fill it up with a pen, trying to remember, find or recover information which you might or might not have access to (but that you know for a fact that it’s stored in multiple databases behind some firewall). Then go to a physical location with your little printed form, queue up, and hope for the best.

I understand the complexity of software. I know that managing large amounts of data across multiple organisations might be difficult. But I also know that it is not that difficult, especially considering the time and money that has been spent.

I can see how the system is working in the UK. It is possible to receive a notification from your GP. It is possible to book online. It is possible to manage all these records in a state of emergency. Of course there have been problems, glitches, bugs and fuck-ups, but overall the system is holding up amazingly well.

In Italy we are witnessing the results of decades of ignorance in power, and frankly I don’t have much hope for change.

Thinking different

When “this” all started about a year ago, we were all wondering how long would it last and if some of the changes we were forced into would actually stick in the long term. We can’t really say, since we are not out of “this” yet, but I wanted to write down a few notes today, perhaps to come back to them at some point in the future, and check out what actually happened.

Here we go with my list: in the 12 months…

I haven’t been to India and I haven’t met any of my Indian colleagues in person, but I have built this beautiful Lego auto rickshaw.
  • I have not spent a whole day in the office.
  • I have met some of my colleagues in person half a dozen times, two only once, one I never met (she was hired post lockdown). But we do talk every day.
  • We have started working on three major project with new startups, without having ever met the founders in person.
  • I have not had a single business meeting in person. The last one was at the Institute of Directors on Mach 11, 2020.
  • I did pay for my IoD membership for the last year, haven’t swiped my card once. I don’t think I will renew this month.
  • I also paid for my memberships at Kew and the V&A, and hardly used them. But I will keep those active, hoping to go back soon.
  • I didn’t wear a suit or a jacket or my dress shoes. I did wear one of my waistcoats on Christmas day.
  • I haven’t had any Indian food. Nor Thai. Chinese just once. A couple of Vietnamese and a few supermarket sushis. I miss Asian food.
  • I have only been on four short flights, haven’t travelled anywhere except Italy and the UK.

I might add more items later, I would love to read yours in the comments below.

One year and counting

Yesterday it was exactly one year since my first quarantine post.

The day before we had decided to close the office, at least for a week, and then see what would happen. One year later I have gone back to the office not more than 5 times, and never spent any time there doing any regular “day at the office” kind of work.

But what a year, uh?!?

While quite a few of my friends in the UK are getting vaccinated, as of today here in Italy we are back in full “red zone” lockdown. Oh, and my flight back to London has been cancelled, so now I should fly back to London on May 1st.

London… I think I have been less times in central London in the last year than in the previous dozen years. It’s odd.

But I have definitely spent more time at home in Italy than in the last six years (since I moved to London). It has been good.

Photo of our house taken earlier today, we need to replace the deck and I was documenting the status quo.

Red zone means that you cannot leave your municipality, unless you have real needs, and in that case you must print a permit in case you get stopped by police.

These limitations to movement between municipalities got me thinking about borders. A while back I came across this post from 2007 I wrote on the day Slovenia entered the Schengen treaty, and how incredible it felt when that border disappeared. We were just not used to borders anymore. Now I’m mindful of the borders of my tiny municipality, aware that if I want to leave it I need to carry some sort of pass (let alone travelling to another country, which is a much more complicated and in some cases completely forbidden matter).

Of course this will all go away soon enough, but I think that I will be even more mindful crossing borders (especially when I will have to cross the border to the UK for the first time after Brexit).

Keep calm, get vaccinated and carry on.