“Excel was always meant for people mucking around with a bunch of data for their small company to see what it looked like,” commented Prof Jon Crowcroft from the University of Cambridge.
"And then when you need to do something more serious, you build something bespoke that works - there’s dozens of other things you could do.
“But you wouldn’t use XLS. Nobody would start with that.”
This was a rubbish solution, but it wasn’t a cheap one. Track and Trace has so far cost the British taxpayer £23 billion with another £14 billion earmarked for next year. This for a system that a cross-party committee said showed no measurable difference in slowing the ‘pandemic’.
This is typical of what happens whenever government gets involved - no accountability and vast cost overruns with poor end results.
