The UK Government have made a pig's ear of pretty much the whole of their Covid response precisely because they refuse to engage with anyone who might actually know what they're doing. Everything's been outsourced at great expense to private companies operating on a wing and a prayer basis. Millions of pounds and many weeks' of time early on in the pandemic was wasted building a bespoke app that anyone with any experience told them wouldn't work. They finally were forced into an embarrassing climbdown where they had to accept the Google/Apple solution that they'd previously dismissed as not good enough.
The only thing they've done well is the vaccine programme because they actually let the National Health Service get on with it instead of letting some big outsourcing company flounder about expensively.
Funny you should mention that. Literally the day that the UK rolled out the new app using the Google/Apple solution, the BBC suddenly forgot about the downsides of the old app and decided that its advantages over the new one were real after all. Even found a few experts to back them up, whereas before you'd think only the government considered it to have any advantage.
The UK Government have made a pig's ear of pretty much the whole of their Covid response precisely because they refuse to engage with anyone who might actually know what they're doing. Everything's been outsourced at great expense to private companies operating on a wing and a prayer basis. Millions of pounds and many weeks' of time early on in the pandemic was wasted building a bespoke app that anyone with any experience told them wouldn't work. They finally were forced into an embarrassing climbdown where they had to accept the Google/Apple solution that they'd previously dismissed as not good enough.
The only thing they've done well is the vaccine programme because they actually let the National Health Service get on with it instead of letting some big outsourcing company flounder about expensively.