I worked in the public sector long enough to know how this works.
Step 1: Somebody has the idea of a tool, just a low profile thing that can site on the internet and probably deal with a few queries an hour. The tool is specced accordingly.
Step 2: A politician decides that it would be great to announce this tool as a way of diverting attention away from whatever their current PR disaster happens to be.
Step 3: Tool can't cope with the sudden influx of traffic. Developers get the blame.
In this case step 2 was particularly galling as the tool was announced before the press conference which of course generated even more traffic as everybody+dog tried to find out what tier they would be in before the press conference.
Luckily there was no fanfare around https://coronavirus-staging.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map because it's actually quite useful.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
