back to article New Jersey blames Microsoft for weeks of outages, glitches plaguing coronavirus vaccine sign-up website

New Jersey's Microsoft-powered coronavirus vaccine-registration system has not worked properly for the past five weeks, according to officials, and may never work as specified. The US state's CovidVaccine.nj.gov website is supposed to allow people to book appointments for their shots, and uses Redmond's Vaccination Management …

  1. FILE_ID.DIZ

    “Remember we are building the airplane here as we’re flying it," he said. "It may be the most complex logistical undertaking — other than going to war — in the history of the United States."

    I'm not trying to make excuses, because things can be immensely complex behind the scenes with regulations, compliance so on and such forth. Toss in underfunded and mismanaged emergencies and that's an excellent recipe for disaster.

    With all that said... these actors have had nearly a year to prepare for the inevitable - the coordination, distribution and injection of a vaccine.

    And to the last part about going to war....I would add that the US is the undefeated champion of two world wars and of all declared wars, frankly.

    /s

    1. Sandtitz Silver badge
      Holmes

      "And to the last part about going to war....I would add that the US is the undefeated champion of two world wars and of all declared wars, frankly."

      That's five wars in total, of which the War of 1812 resulted in a draw.

      1. FILE_ID.DIZ
        Happy

        A tie isn't a loss. I draw on my experience with chess.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      "I would add that the US is the undefeated champion of two world wars and of all declared wars, frankly."

      That would be WWI, 1917 to 1918 and WWII, 1941 to 1945?

      1. FILE_ID.DIZ

        Spanish-American War and the Mexican-American Wars are the remaining two declared wars.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I seem to recall a little war in Vietnam that the US lost. Also, the war of 1812 was a defeat for the US - humiliated to the extent that the US capital was occupied and its public buildings razed. The only reason the British agreed to such a lenient peace was because they were frankly glad to put it in the past after the Napoleonic wars.

      1. FILE_ID.DIZ
        Boffin

        There's a bunch of conflicts that America won or withdrew or lost, as in the case with Vietnam. However, our conflict with Vietnam wasn't a declared war by the congresscritters. It was approved by them, but war was not declared per article one, section eight. I was very specific with the word declaration.

        As for the humiliation of the Capitol being sacked, we needn't look further back than a bit over five weeks ago... why go back 209 years?

  2. Claverhouse
    Linux

    Forever and Ever...

    “We are working with the state of New Jersey to deliver vaccinations as quickly, safely and efficiently as possible, and that includes addressing some technical issues,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Bloomberg

    ... And then addressing the technical issues caused by the patches to repair the technical issues.

  3. redpawn

    You go to Vacinate with the Microsoft you Have

    not the Microsoft you wish you had. But to be frank, I blame the users until the Vista version comes out.

  4. Mike Lewis

    Why anyone uses Microsoft software to do anything important is completely beyond me. When I was writing safety-critical code for medical equipment and an air traffic control system, we used Linux so we didn't kill people.

    1. Tabor

      Ah yes. Because we all know "using linux" avoids bad analysis, unclear scopes, lousy project management and shoddy coding.

      /s

      1. Falmari Silver badge
        Joke

        BSOD

        Linux does avoid the Blue Screen Of Death. :)

      2. Mike Lewis

        Writing the ATC software was interesting.

        I was told when I got the job that I would be allowed one bug in my code. A second one meant termination.

        My code was gone through with a fine-tooth comb by the two most senior engineers before I was even allowed to run it on the test bench.

        There was a lot of redundant hardware. Each communcations card had a full set of backup channels. There were backup cards in each rack, backup racks and two generators.

        Although we were some months behind schedule, there was no pressure at all to cut corners.

        1. Falmari Silver badge

          Good old days

          “I was told when I got the job that I would be allowed one bug in my code.”

          Ah the good old days where you got proper requirements from which to produce a design stating exactly how it would work with pseudocode and the unit tests which had to be approved before a single line of code was written.

          I remember having an end of year performance review bounced back to me by my line manger as I had marked my relationship with test as good. He said I had to mark it as NA as I had no relationship because I had never had any software sent back from test.

          That never happens now in todays agile world of woolly requirements where everyone including test seems to have a different view of what the software should do.

  5. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
    Joke

    Ah ha!

    Redmond's Vaccination Management platform

    A connection to Bill Gates!

  6. Howard Sway Silver badge

    the most complex logistical undertaking - other than going to war - in the history of the US

    Guess the Apollo moon missions were a piece of cake when compared with this appointment booking application.

    And good news for British readers, from the linked Microsoft promo page :

    "Most recently, The National Covid Vaccination Registration Platform for the 45 million eligible citizens in the U.K. is built via an Azure web form and hosted on Azure. As part of the overall service, System C, hosted and managed the National Immunisation Management System (NIMS) on Azure, also integrating with Primary Care and National Health Systems (NHS) nationally, using Power BI for reporting."

    1. FILE_ID.DIZ

      Re: the most complex logistical undertaking - other than going to war - in the history of the US

      I suspect a big difference between going to the moon versus combating COVID or going to war would be the compression of time.

      There was about seven years between Kennedy's "We choose to go to the Moon" speech and the first landing on the moon. Wars and pandemics have more compressed time lines.

    2. Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

      Re: the most complex logistical undertaking - other than going to war - in the history of the US

      "from the linked Microsoft promo page :

      Most recently, The National Covid Vaccination Registration Platform for the 45 million eligible citizens in the U.K. is built via an Azure web form and hosted on Azure. As part of the overall service, System C, hosted and managed the National Immunisation Management System (NIMS) on Azure, also integrating with Primary Care and National Health Systems (NHS) nationally, using Power BI for reporting."

      One wonders if the system requirements were written by Microsoft sales. "Here's a list of the stuff we're currently pushing. See how much of this you can shoehorn into the registration system."

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: the most complex logistical undertaking - other than going to war - in the history of the US

        Speaking as an NHS IT staffer there are more than a few of our tribe who have the thousand yard stare look after going through the most crazy year of their lives. I can't help but think when the foot does finally lift off the pedal there's going to be a significant number who just say "I'm done."

  7. a_yank_lurker

    Pot Meet Kettle

    For those who have never had the misfortune of living in 'Jersey' as it is called over here it is notoriously one of the most corrupt states over here. So to hear them complaining sounds like they are mad that the Rejects of Redmond did not pay them off and thus dragged their feet. When was living in 'Jersey' is a regular occurrence for state officials to be indicted and convicted of corruption. So if someone is a 'Jersey' politician the issue is not whether they are corrupt but whether they will be convicted.

    1. FILE_ID.DIZ
      Thumb Down

      Re: Pot Meet Kettle

      So if someone is a 'Jersey' politician the issue is not whether they are corrupt but whether they will be convicted.

      Until the Supremes tossed the conviction of fraud of those involved in Bridgegate - an unanimous decision by the way - further narrowing the federal definition of "fraud" with respect to a public employee's corrupt actions.

    2. Justin Clements

      Re: Pot Meet Kettle

      One of your lot escape Jersey and took a position at the State of Florida that awarded Sunpass (tolls roads). Of course she awarded it to a friend of hers in New Jersey. She left Florida when the AG came calling. And they only found out what happened because the company couldn't scale up their billing system! They literally had disclosed a max 500k transaction limit per day and bid for a 2m transaction contract. Why scale up when you can pay someone off?

  8. six_tymes

    sounds like healthcare.gov all over again. although those problems had nothing to do with Microsoft. Those problems were all on the cronies who made off with millions. The fact is, we are all too reliant on computers now.

    1. Denarius Silver badge

      @six

      No, Six. IMHO, governments and corps are too reliant on smooth talking PHBs and sales weasels who have no project coding scars, able to hoodwink even less informed clerks in suits about what software can and cannot do. Not enough formal contract writers who know what needs to be non-negotiable. None of these skills are sexy or exciting but a few hundred years of project experience show they are needed.

      The old specifications, design, review, code and test, debug in sequence isn't done. Project creep and scope changes are allowed instead of being grounds for termination. As much as I hate to say it. more snoopy qualified auditors who report to joint sittings of governments and are protected by whistle blower laws are needed. A formal employment contract for pollies and senior public serpents on being elected or employed may help, if administered by an independent branch of the auditors. Cant trust senior public bureaucrats or pollies to judge themselves

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like