Well done NHS Scotland … From a Fire, a Phoenix Can Rise

Well done NHS Scotland … From a Fire, a Phoenix Can Rise

As the song says, “What a difference a day makes. 24 little hours”. And, from a fire, a phoenix can rise.

Well, it’s not easy releasing a new piece of software, and the first days are often the worst. So, on Thursday evening, the new NHS Scotland App was released, and, unfortunately, something buckled. It was also buggy. The main bug, though, was that after checking your biometrics and scanning your passport and matching your face to it, the system often failed to find the user. This happened even when you entered your health ID (in Scotland this is defined by the CHI number), and had checked all your details. There was no feedback given, just that a match could not be found. But, I am glad to say that there has been work done in the background, and, as of today, it seems to be all up-and-running. And, once you are registered, it looks great and works well.

With many pieces of software, if the first experience is not good, the user will often give up on it. But, for this App, I think users will go back to it, as it is likely to be used within international travel. I just hope that trust can be rebuilt, and that all the bugs are fixed. I would assume that sticky part of the process is the registration part, and once registered the proof of vaccine will stay on the device, and not rely on a back-end service.

With the major bug gone, it actually works very well. Overall, there are two new Apps. I hope, perhaps, that they could be merged into one application, in the future — as users may pick the wrong one. One is for scanning and the other one is for proof of vaccination (COVID Status):

While the usage of vaccine passports for entry into bars and sports venues might be debatable, there’s a definite need for this with international travel. The great thing about the NHS Scotland App is that it is compatible with the EU Green Pass so that it can be used across the EU. While I still struggled to get my face scanned on my iPhone (I think because of camera access issues from IOS 15), I managed to register my face and it found my vaccination status:

I went back to my iPhone, logged in, and added my PIN and enabled face recognition, and it was all working. Overall, compared to the static and unsecured PDF version, the App feels more in tune with a modern integration, and the use of face recognition on my iPhone is excellent. Overall, I use face recognition for many things and I trust it. I have no idea if it works well on an Android device, but for an iPhone, it provides great levels of trust. I personally wouldn’t trust a banking App, if it didn’t enable face recognition.

While the App now works for me, I hope it can work for those who are less technical, and that we can use it to re-enable international travel to and from Scotland. We have, at least, a platform to build on, and I would hope that other identity providers and ways of identifying the citizen can be integrated in the near future.

It would be great, too, to share the details of what is happening on the back-end, so that it can scale the integration of trust and identity into other government services, and hopefully build something like the Estonian X-Road.

For all the software developers, cloud architectures, and technical people out there, the release of the NHS Scotland App yesterday shows that testing and scaling are key challenges. The team at NHS Scotland have done a great job in fixing it, and I hope this new App can build high levels of trust with citizens.

Overall, well done, NHS Scotland. A great step forward. Yesterday was (hopefully) a small glitch in your road map, and let’s hope we have something that can re-enable our bonds and friendships with people around the EU and around the world. The world has become a more connected place today.

If you are interested, our Blockpass ID Lab focuses on the citizen, and their privacy, and access to government services, so, if you are interested, come and partner with us.

So, let’s build a more trusted digital world, and use it to break down the barriers and borders which falsely divide us!