Coronavirus - how is it/has it affected you?

[HomerJSimpson]

Had a meeting yesterday and officially redundant - 12 weeks notice starts on the 8th October and finish on 31st December. The company claims covid but I'm sure they had this in the planning for a while. Still ridiculously busy and the staff taking over from another group company are beginning to realise what they'll have to cope with - good luck to them!!

Onwards and upwards!

Sorry to hear that. What do you do? If the other company are going to struggle is there any chance of some temp work with them. Seems daft to lose valuable knowledge and watch people struggle

 

[Mudball]

more on the Excel hancockup
https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/05/excel_england_coronavirus_contact_error/

As always the comments can be more funny than the actual story..

 

[drdel]

Looks like the majority of posts are not about how COVID has impacted 'you' but turned ìnto 'political ' moaning.

 

[Jimaroid]

On Sky last night, one of their reporters was explaining how the problem occurred and he said that it is never a good idea to use Excel as a database management tool, it isn't one. The basic problem here is the NHS IT infrastructure. Those with a long memory will recall that NHS IT disasters are common, and this one occurred because PHE just didn't have up to date or well integrated systems. That is not PHE's fault, the same problem which affects every other part of the NHS. It would seem obvious that at the start of this process when Serco-Deloitte Test and Trace was being plugged in, that someone should have checked that the systems were adequately robust.

Indeed. There are conflicting reports about the root technical cause. Some say it was due to a column limit, others say it was due to a row limit (either or both are feasible), some say it was due to .xls vs .csv file formats which raises skepticism because CSV files are not inherently constrained in any dimension, they can be as big as the largest file permissable in the filesystem.

Anyway to my point. The factual confusion is familiar territory - media reporting of IT issues is nearly always inadequate and in-expertly dubious - but what is common amongst all of the reporting is that the version of software being used at PHE was obsolete and this problem wouldn't have occurred for the sake of a ~ £100 software license upgrade. Out of the £10bn (It's risen to £12bn I think?) available to test and trace, it's a staggering incompetence of oversight. It is a human error.

There is nothing inherently "bad" about Excel - it is fundamentally a good piece of software that is incredibly (overly?) versatile. The outcries of "use a real database" is fair but it is just as easy to make mistakes with those as it is with Excel - SQL is an awfully error prone language. The root issue in this case won't be solved by a database, they don't automatically solve the problem of data transfer between disparate systems, data has to be exported from one system and imported into another. There are many "reliable" ways to do this, most of them based around a concept of a well structured text file, and all of them are subject to a chance of failure or error.

So we come to the second human error. The simple lack of introspection that should be part of any systems or data engineering task, "Is the output the same as we expected from the input?" It seems nobody appears to have asked this question until it was too late. That says more to me about the shambolic situation than blaming the tools being used.

"A bad workman blames his tools"

(None of this is a dig at NHS staff whom I hold in high regard btw. Mistakes happen, especially in times of crisis with an under-funded, under-resourced and over-stressed environment. Anyway, I think this is last I'm going to say on this matter because the situation of a crisis managed by clowns is making me depressed and angry)

 

[robinthehood]

Looks like the majority of posts are not about how COVID has impacted 'you' but turned ìnto 'political ' moaning.

If you dont like it, hit the report button, mess ups like the one being discussed affect us all.

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

Looks like the majority of posts are not about how COVID has impacted 'you' but turned ìnto 'political ' moaning.

Nope - they are all just commenting on the IT system, Serco and PHE - and public reporting of the mess. I think we can all agree that what has and has not happened is unacceptable and therefore comment and criticism of Serco and PHE is valid and not political. After all - at the moment none of us know whether we are in scope of tracing that has not yet been completed and so this mess might impact any of us. As might any future similar problem. We should therefore all be concerned - and confident that Hancock has read the Riot Act to Serco and PHE.

 

[pendodave]

Indeed. There are conflicting reports about the root technical cause. Some say it was due to a column limit, others say it was due to a row limit (either or both are feasible), some say it was due to .xls vs .csv file formats which raises skepticism because CSV files are not inherently constrained in any dimension, they can be as big as the largest file permissable in the filesystem.

Anyway to my point. The factual confusion is familiar territory - media reporting of IT issues is nearly always inadequate and in-expertly dubious - but what is common amongst all of the reporting is that the version of software being used at PHE was obsolete and this problem wouldn't have occurred for the sake of a ~ £100 software license upgrade. Out of the £10bn (It's risen to £12bn I think?) available to test and trace, it's a staggering incompetence of oversight. It is a human error.

There is nothing inherently "bad" about Excel - it is fundamentally a good piece of software that is incredibly (overly?) versatile. The outcries of "use a real database" is fair but it is just as easy to make mistakes with those as it is with Excel - SQL is an awfully error prone language. The root issue in this case won't be solved by a database, they don't automatically solve the problem of data transfer between disparate systems, data has to be exported from one system and imported into another. There are many "reliable" ways to do this, most of them based around a concept of a well structured text file, and all of them are subject to a chance of failure or error.

So we come to the second human error. The simple lack of introspection that should be part of any systems or data engineering task, "Is the output the same as we expected from the input?" It seems nobody appears to have asked this question until it was too late. That says more to me about the shambolic situation than blaming the tools being used.

"A bad workman blames his tools"

(None of this is a dig at NHS staff whom I hold in high regard btw. Mistakes happen, especially in times of crisis with an under-funded, under-resourced and over-stressed environment. Anyway, I think this is last I'm going to say on this matter because the situation of a crisis managed by clowns is making me depressed and angry)

I agree with this post almost completely...
But "SQL is an awfully error prone language."??? Not sure about that. Sql is an implementation of mathematical set theory on which relational databases are based (or it was last time I worked in data warehousing). Errors I encountered were always a lack of understanding/training by designers or users.
"The key, the whole key and nothing but the key. So help me Codd".
Rather like excel, it's apparent ease of use leads to shoddy work by those who shouldn't, it's not the tools per se.
Building computer systems used to be done in a similar way to building other engineering products. For some time it's been done without rigour, planning, testing etc. What has happened is depressing but entirely predictable.

 

[Mudball]

I agree with this post almost completely...
But "SQL is an awfully error prone language."??? Not sure about that. Sql is an implementation of mathematical set theory on which relational databases are based (or it was last time I worked in data warehousing). Errors I encountered were always a lack of understanding/training by designers or users.
"The key, the whole key and nothing but the key. So help me Codd".
Rather like excel, it's apparent ease of use leads to shoddy work by those who shouldn't, it's not the tools per se.
Building computer systems used to be done in a similar way to building other engineering products. For some time it's been done without rigour, planning, testing etc. What has happened is depressing but entirely predictable.

xls or xlsx is now a million dollar question. In the world of tech, Excel will continued to be used.. I use it everyday. Its still probably the simplest way to take disparate csv's into a single system. As you mentioned, this is more about shoddy work and poor oversight rather than what excel can or cant do

 

[HampshireHog]

Excel is such a dangerous tool, easy to use, easy to misuse, and impossible to control. I work in Business Intelligence use Excel a fair amount for presenting data and report writing but once there is a significant volume of data or any type of governance required you have to be using a proper BI Analytics tool.

 

[SocketRocket]

The Developers made a mistake and will put it right, end of debate. Its getting very tiring reading about how people would have done things differently and how better they are than the developers. It's like 'Historical Standing Position' over again.

 

[AmandaJR]

Sorry to hear that. What do you do? If the other company are going to struggle is there any chance of some temp work with them. Seems daft to lose valuable knowledge and watch people struggle

These days it's Sales Admin - used to manage Sales and Logistics before golf took over! The office is set to close on the 31st December so not sure if they'll try to keep some staff after that to continue with the "transition". The new office is in Sheffield. Our transport planner is staying as he can work from home most of the week - he's beginning to realise if he's the only one left standing from the team he's going to have a lot of questions coming his way!

The job requires a lot of product knowledge and also we have a flipping complex set of pricing and order parameters that basically need to be learnt as not automated by the system. I think the company (or at least our "owners") have underestimated what is required and have recruited heavily to cover the workload...not sure how much they'll save except for building costs!

 

[Old Skier]

Ones thing for sure, whichever government was in control the same problem would have occurred because some “expert” would have advised that they were capable of doing the job with the tools they had.

The public sector is renowned for paying peanuts for things like IT staff.

 

[SocketRocket]

If the discussion bores you don’t read it. Certainly don’t comment just to derail it.

Would be a very dull place if we all had the same interests.

Just waiting for that old chestnut.
You have to read it to find out it bores you ?

 

[GreiginFife]

Rolls Royce once decided to make the turbine blades for its RB2-11 gas turbine engine out of carbon fibre due to it being light and strong in torsion. They later found when putting it in service the carbon fibre broke down in heavy rain. It just about bankrupted the company.
Has anyone never made a mistake?

Yeah but when did they discover that mistake? Before lives were put at risk?
If it was then yeah, it was costly but didn't put anyone in harms way.

This... not so much.

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

The Developers made a mistake and will put it right, end of debate. Its getting very tiring reading about how people would have done things differently and how better they are than the developers. It's like 'Historical Standing Position' over again.

Though I suspect that in your business life that that is simply not what you'd expect or demand from your senior management if there was a serious and high profile error. You just wouldn't say - never mind lads - just get on with things - and try not and do it again. Because - for example - as in this instance it will not just have been the Developers...

No - you would demand a 'drain covers up' root cause analysis with senior managers reporting to you directly on what had happened, and on whether anything similar might have happened previously but that hasn't come to light; you'd expect them to take responsibility for ensuring that an improvement plan was put in place to ensure that such a mistake was not made again. And you'd ensure that one or more senior managers would be responsible for overseeing delivery of that improvement plan - with regular reporting direct to you.

Well - if you wouldn't do any of that then I sure as heck would (as, having been in the middle of a significant IT security breach storm around a major government system made public in the Sunday Mail - I know what happens)

 

[Jamesbrown]

The Developers made a mistake and will put it right, end of debate. Its getting very tiring reading about how people would have done things differently and how better they are than the developers. It's like 'Historical Standing Position' over again.

What’s the historical standing position?

 

[SocketRocket]

Yeah but most people manage to spot if it's that boring old topic again quite quickly and can ignore it. Others just like to moan.

Pointing out the futility is not moaning.

 

[SocketRocket]

What’s the historical standing position?

It was a marathon thread by Hogan discussing where your playing partners should stand on the tee box ?

 

[hovis]

It was a marathon thread by Hogan discussing where your playing partners should stand on the tee box ?

???? I remember that one

 

[SocketRocket]

Yeah but when did they discover that mistake? Before lives were put at risk?
If it was then yeah, it was costly but didn't put anyone in harms way.

This... not so much.

It's just an example of how some of the most expert organisations can make mistakes with design. In this case thankfully it was discovered just prior to going into service.