[johannes1234321]

Nope, it's not 1000 lines of UI code. It is a project with lots of pressure (timeline, politics, ...) and two years of maintenance. Including two apps (iOS and Android) multiple Backend systems and a concept, project management (coordination between government, testing laboratories, ...) looking at the team size (educated guess based on GitHub stats) the hourly rate is on the higher side, but it's still low for a government contract and in case it has effect (which is still not proven) peanuts compared to the financial cost of COVID.

[quonn]

I said a few 1000 and I actually browsed the code on Github when it came out.

There were just six weeks to develop it.

And the concepts where developed before by public research institutes for a tiny fraction of that price (not included).

(If you insist, here is a small calculation. Let‘s say we charge a whopping 500 Euros per hour per engineer. In other words an engineer that costs 1 million per year. And we have 6 weeks time which was all they had. And let’s take 20 people for that. And let‘s add 500.000 for some overhead. Then that‘s still just about 3 million. And I‘ve used insane numbers for a product that trivial.)

[johannes1234321]

First mistake: you calculate 6 weeks of dev time ignoring that SAP got 11.5M including maintenance for 2 years. Certainly amount of work in two years time is lower than initial dev work, but not zero.

Secondly you are only taking in "development work", but such a contract entails other things - certainly there is a penalty if they deliver too late - there is legal risk to cover, if they deliver crap in some legal sense they are liable - probably SAP had other contracts which they had to postpone - count in all the lawyers writing the contract :-D

And yes, they certainly made a profit out of this and yes a proper biding procedure might be better, but given the timelines and the transparency I think it's ok.

[quonn]

Okay, and the additional 1.5 million should suffice to „maintain“ an app that will not need or get any new features.

Let‘s assume another million for lawyers „writing the contract“. It‘s still far off.

Additionally let‘s remember the 20 million is just for the development. It does not include running the thing. That‘s what the other 50+ million are for.

I don‘t agree. I run a business myself. I charge plenty. I know how much DAX size companies charge as well. The numbers don‘t add up, and this is especially true for something that could have been done pro bono by SAP in the current situation where pretty much everyone tries to do whatever they can.

[quonn]

I can‘t reply to marvion below so I put it here: The total initial cost is 20 million. As I said SAP gets half. These „operation“ costs by Telekom do not actually include any operations. The actual operation (including the hotlines) is estimated at 2-3 millions per month. But it actually depends, it‘s not a flat fee.

[johannes1234321]

Operations for two years are actually not 20 but 40M. But this includes two phone hotlines, thus actual labor cost. (And by then the development costs are close to irrelevant already ...)

[marvion]

The German Spiegel listed the 20M cost somewhat differently:

- 9.5M development (SAP)

- 7.8M setup/operations (Telekom)

- 2M Support(SAP)

+ Tax

So, in the books, development is 10M, not 20M

(german source, un-paywalled: https://outline.com/UYqb5b)

[bigiain]

> but such a contract entails other things - certainly there is a penalty if they deliver too late - there is legal risk to cover,

... celebratory cocaine for the entire sales team, new yacht bonuses for the entire executive team, another few mil into the CTO's golden handshake fund, and a brown paper bag full of unmarked notes for the gov procurement guy. Poor bastards probably barely broke even on the project - certainly not enough to pay out any bonuses to the devs or project managers...

[tlarkworthy]

20M for the boost of Germany's worldwide status is a drop in the ocean. The money was well spent, Germany did not embarrass themselves by penny pinching. It needed to work, and it appears to. Compare this to the UK who is still flapping around.

[quonn]

It doesn‘t work great. I actually run it on my phone. It has silly bugs, despite the simplicity.

Additionally, for that price you could have easily have 3 independent teams develop it and take the best one and still be cheaper and better.

I hope someone will challenge this in court. I don‘t think they can get away without a call for bids which should have been done (across Europe, as the law requires).

[johannes1234321]

Yes it has bugs, but most bugs are from the system framework ... they could have handled those better, but the cause is often out of their control

[rkachowski]

In what sense are most of the bugs from the "system framework"?

[johannes1234321]

There is this contact tracing framework in iOS and Google Play Services and that causes a few errors. Some users get a message like "not possible in your region" and some get some random error codes about rate limits and such errors, which bubble up from those frameworks and can only be fixed there.

[riffraff]

I mean, if there was a public tender there's little to complain, if there wasn't then it seems right to, even if it's "a drop in the ocean".

And frankly nobody thinks "wow, Germany has a working COVID app" since almost everyone else has it too. Even Italy, amongst a ton of screw ups, has managed to produce a perfectly fine open source contact tracing app.

[tlarkworthy]

Many do not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_apps#List_of_countrie...

US, UK, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Chile, Belgium, Sweden are significantly affected countries without one.

I don't expect Germany to get a wow, only abscense of negative press.

[johannes1234321]

> And frankly nobody thinks "wow, Germany has a working COVID app"

Small exchange from the British Parliament: https://youtu.be/atAy8NGOoiw

[patentatt]

Yeah, I don’t get all these people criticizing the cost. Also, when a government is dealing with a flagship corporation of their country, cost is a secondary or tertiary concern anyways. It’s a subsidy in part, and it’s also just that $10m for a nation state government to get it right the first time is just so so so inexpensive. I think SAP let them off easy this time, if anything.

[quonn]

> It‘s a subsidy in part

An illegal subsidy. Public contracts require a bidding process, usually across Europe.

It‘s unfair that smaller companies don‘t get a chance.

I reject the idea that Germany should prop up its biggest companies, excluding what really is the backbone of the German economy (which works very differently from the US one) and also excluding our partners across all of Europe.

[_Wintermute]

I think the UK's decision to switch to Google and Apple's framework was actually the right decision, although it's all rather moot and a waste of money as I can't see any contact tracing app work if nobody downloads it (see France).

[somethoughts]

Reminds me of the following article discussed on HN previously [1]:

I could do that in a weekend! http://danluu.com/sounds-easy/

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12626314

[quonn]

The article was about companies actually shipping complex products over a long time. All of that is fully justified.

Not someone taking over a fairly small project, finishing it in 6 weeks and then charging 20 millions for the job.

[quonn]

Peanuts compared to the cost of COVID? How is that a valid measure?

[rsynnott]

If one of these apps leads to avoidance of a handful of serious cases (by identifying clusters earlier and thus reducing spread) it has paid for itself. An ICU bed costs _at least_ 2000 euro a day (that's for a normal one, ongoing operational costs only; rush-job new ICU capacity is presumably more expensive); it doesn't take too many averted hospitalisations to pay off one of these apps.

Obviously, it would have been better if the German app has been cheaper. But rush jobs are expensive, and the cost involved is pretty minimal relative to the cost of managing the pandemic writ large. If it's even slightly effective, it was worth it.

[number6]

I think a lot of people could have made a good working app for a lot less. But on the other side: if SAP and Telekom had failed no one would have blamed the government.

And if the both had failed their reputation would have suffered a lot. Well it's not the best as it is, so well.

They have a top team and delivered on time. Thats rare in software development.

And 20 million are nothing compared to the tax break which costs about 3 trillion.

For the government it's money well spend in two german flagship companies.

My guess most of it was insurance money in case something went wrong, so these companies would have taken the fall.