Cyprus Mail 8 April 2021
By George Georgiou
Most will have heard about the crashing of the vaccine portal soon after it opened on Wednesday for those over 61.
First of all, what genius decided to lower the minimum age from 64 to 61given that as age goes down the number of those eligible increases at a faster rate?
Second, the philosophy of how appointments are made is completely mistaken and has been put together by people that do not understand or are interested in how a proper application should operate. The appointments should not have been arranged immediately, as if you are booking a seat on a plane.
When it is announced that the portal will open for a certain age group, the portal should open immediately and accept ‘applications’ rather than for appointments to be booked on a first come, first serve basis. It should stay open for two or three days, without giving priority in the way the system would process applications, so as to avoid everyone logging in to the system at the same time.
Applications would include the same data currently asked for, while the applicant would choose three things: district, first and second choice of vaccine and as the third option have the system decide where and when to go for a vaccination as well as the make of vaccine; an added option on this, if someone has a busy schedule, could be to give a choice on the time and day.
Once the period of the applications is over, the system processes the applications, sets appointment dates and notifies the applicant who will have to send a confirmation. The SMS seeking confirmation could be sent gradually if there is a fear the systems of the providers would be overloaded. Alternatively, emails could be used when addresses are provided.
Subsequently, the portal would open only for those who declared in their application they wanted to choose the place and time. The email or SMS they would receive after the first processing of applications would provide them with an access code and only they would be able to enter the system, which will be open for a few hours, to choose time, place and vaccine.
If all appointments taken up and there are still applicants, they would not need to submit another application. They would be given priority in booking an appointment in the next round of applications before the age for applicants is lowered.
I believe there would be very few people that would not accept the time and vaccination centre given to them by the system. This would decongest the system and spare people of the stress of sitting at their PC or laptop for hours trying to book an appointment.
By the way, this procedure is not something that I discovered first and nobody else had thought of. This is essentially how vaccination appointments are arranged in most if not all European countries – you do not book online instantaneously, but you are sent the time and place of appointment.
What could be done in the next few hours/days for the existing system to operate, until the above-mentioned changes are made? The decision for the applications by those over 61 is cancelled, while the programmers calculate how many users the system can take at the same time. If they feel the system could take everyone over 63, it should be opened only for them; the next time the portal would open for those over 62, assuming the system can cope, and so forth. It the system cannot handle a single year the age could be lowered by six months at a time.
Whatever is done, one thing is clear. The changes I mentioned above must be made so that the system operates properly, otherwise the problems will continue to inconvenience people.
The way the Gesy software behaves has been found wanting in many respects, but this problem with the software for the vaccinations proves that those who defined the terms of behaviour of the software and asked the programmers to implement, are clearly unsuitable for the job.
We all know that a building could collapse if a contractor and the builders fail to use the specified materials, but many times it could collapse because the architect/engineer had not make the correct calculations.
Even if the contractor is to blame for using unsuitable building materials, the responsibility belongs to the architect/engineer, either because they made mistaken calculations or did not effectively supervise the construction to ensure suitable materials were used. This is also the case with the Gesy software and much more so in the case of the vaccinations application.
- George Georgiou is a retired IT professional
