The hosting of the COVID vaccination registration website costs the state 50k in the first month (real costs 4k)

Hello, I wanted to share an interesting national story "pigs". I am attaching the text from the fb post (original post here):

How much do you think it costs the state to host the Covid Vaccination Registration Page (ESVIS) per month? Exactly 50k EUR.

It was created and continues to be maintained by the TSMA company, often referred to in LRT studies (e.g. https://www.lrt.lt/naujienos/lrt-tyrimai/5/1160277/lrt-tyrimas-verslo-kova-be-skrupulu-per-koronaviruso-krize-paralyziuotas-greitosios-pagalbos-darbas). If I understand the history of ESVIS development correctly, because everything goes smoothly – we bought the ESVIS system, then the code, then the licenses, then something else, and now we pay 50k EUR per month for support. Since the contract specifies the storage of the infrastructure with the contractor, there are no more options.

Seeing the remaining only symbolic number of vaccination registrations, it is clear that the amount for hosting a page on Azure is enormous. After gaining access, we see that the real costs are around 4k EUR. Generally speaking – TSMA receives a 4k EUR bill and issues us 50k EUR. And so it is repeated every month.

Naturally, we decided to withdraw the account ourselves, thus reducing the cost by at least 10 times. However, here the contractor turned on an interesting mode – the account simply cannot be transferred, because there is something extra in it. They don’t say what else is hosted there, although there are questions about what else is stored next to all our health data. And you can only look at what has been done, and we should try to reconfigure everything ourselves in a new account. When asked to calculate our removal work, they sent a preliminary invoice of over 100k EUR. And if we had to raise what they keep and then transfer the account to us, the price would be 40k EUR. Although we still have no idea what, how much, or whether something is really still there. We should just believe and pay.

It would take a couple of hours of work to transfer our account to us anyway, and without us knowing the details, it could take a month or more to reconfigure everything. Personally, I see it this way – the contractor had a potentially profitable project, for which the customer still has one more request, and it should not be difficult to help one last time and say goodbye nicely. But I don’t see that it smells good for such values. I think he does this with the full understanding that it will greatly complicate the evacuation work, hoping that we will not escape anywhere. If TSMA has arguments why they put such conditions and the state in such a position – they could share them here, it would be interesting to hear.

And this happened very often – when the contractor controlled the code, infrastructure and the entire implementation, he dictated all the conditions, and it is very difficult for the state to get out of it (I have written about this before https://www.facebook.com/enorkunas/posts/10161112097795336 ).

We have already made the decision internally that unless we can reach a mutually satisfactory agreement and move in time, the ESVIS system will be down for some time, while ensuring vaccination registration through the Advance Patient Registration System. It is sad to see how some business structures view our country – let’s take as much as we can, and after us there will be a flood. It seems that they are not interested in the health of the population, the possible consequences. Everything is simpler – there is a profit or there is not.

So I’m very pleased to see the Health Emergencies Authority’s willingness to address this, investment in the IT team and positive changes internally. Together with them, we changed all the new projects that came in, which I believe were written for this particular contractor to close the competition. We will deal with it here.

But I also see what’s happening in the EMS, where these contractors run a huge chunk of the IT that’s responsible for managing all of our nation’s emergency medical services. And I’ll admit, seeing the attitude of the contractors makes me uneasy. Now a huge tender is being announced there, where you can bet that there will be only one contractor – TSMA with the maximum amount of EUR 12M offered. Egle Radvile, ping, read about possible risks in Egle Radvile, we can’t find another way?

In addition to better knowledge from other fronts – VMVT won all legal disputes with InnoForce. The higher court overturned the interpretations of the lower court, took a legal look and allowed the useless contracts to be terminated, the millions will not be spent, and the contractors will have to compensate the incurred litigation costs. Unless they decide to appeal, then we will watch what happens next.

Although they were scratched from here, they seem to have won the pilot competition organized by the Sick Funds with the maximum amount of 4.4M EUR. Maximum due to the fact that there were no other participants. Lucky, no different. And here is only the “pilot”. After that, I would guess that there will be normal amounts with new tenders. Where there are clear coincidences again, that there will be only one and the same contractor.

If someone here thinks that I am insulting their dignity, you will not be the first – I received a letter from the NEVDA company that when I appeared in the Seimas committee about the problems in transferring the code of the SPIS system managed by them and collecting data from their other systems, I insulted their honor and dignity. And if I don’t apologize, I will go to court 🙂

Although I participated in the commission as a representative of the government, after receiving a legal complaint from the contractors, the state can no longer help – the employees have to defend themselves from personal funds. I can afford it, I came knowing that it would be like this, so it’s even interesting for me. But the problem is that not all civil servants see it this way – when business has such blackmail tools, civil servants cannot always act according to their conscience, because then they simply will have no way to defend themselves against terrorism.

I’ll be happy to share how I do. And in the meantime, I suggest that the disgruntled contractors do not bother scaring me one by one, but collaborate together with NEVDA. It will be easier for everyone.

And finally, what is very important – what I am describing is not a very common situation. We have many contractors working with the public sector who are constantly creating, looking for ways to create better, higher quality services and products for the citizens of our country. When asked to hand over code or help figure something out, they are happy to do that and more. Many thanks for this.

And we continue to work on opening the code, keeping it in GIT, making sure we have installation instructions, and constantly updating the code, not just at the end of the project or at some point you remember. So that such moments and the attitude of contractors are forgotten as soon as possible.

PS In the picture you can see NEVDA’s carefully printed and transmitted code. After receiving parts of it digitally, we still can’t figure out if we can count this photo as unlocking the code?