Immediately after the imposition of strict quarantine measures in Hangzhou, 570 km from Wuhan, the city council on February 3 called on three large IT companies based in the city - Ali Cloud, DingTalk and Alipay - to organize an online team to develop so-called "health codes." … Three days later, the project was headed by the party city committee. Secretary Zhou Jianyong made a proposal at a party meeting that to help businesses resume operations, the city must capitalize on its digital economy. He proposed to create a unified digital declaration platform, including personal electronic health codes and a data exchange system.
At the same time, the secretary of the party committee demanded that the system be launched the next (!) Day. Alibaba employees worked around the clock and early in the morning of February 7 following this apparently unavoidable offer, and the system, dubbed the Juhan Green Code (after the area of the city in which it worked), was officially launched. The first 269 thousand people entered their information within 24 hours, and then the Chinese began to test the new technology. On February 11, Hangzhou officially activated the health code system in the city, and the next day it was decided to extend it to the entire province.
Hangzhou.
However, the city, albeit one of the centers of China's digital economy, and the 58-million-strong province are not the same thing. Ali Cloud Data Intelligence senior technical expert Li Hai Long, who led the project, regarded the decision to launch the system in 48 hours as a military order.
“The original team consisted of four people, and the complexity and accuracy of the algorithm increased exponentially,” said Li Hao Long, head of Ali Cloud in Hubei province. "And the sword hung over my head."
If the accuracy of the algorithms of 90% in Hangzhou was fine, then when the system was transferred to a province with a 58 million population, they began to demand 100% accuracy from Li. The criteria for assigning codes were also unclear. Those who came into contact with the sick and their family members were automatically assigned red codes - it was easy. But what code should I assign to people who have passed through Hubei without stopping? Or tenants of an apartment building where a COVID-19 case was discovered? Give everyone red codes? New data appeared about unsystematic or false-negative infections, which entailed another change in rules and algorithms.
When Lee's team finally issued the first line of code at 3 a.m. on February 13, there were only 40 hours before the system was launched, and the clarity of the rules and coding algorithms was still not enough. Lee answered more than 50 calls a day, and could not answer even more, as he was talking on the phone at the time. At one point, Li Hao did not sleep for 48 hours and still cannot remember if he ate at all at that moment.
On February 14 at 2 pm, after 23 hours of hard work, the algorithms were completed and the team proceeded to final coding. Nevertheless, Lee needed to remain flexible - the government updated the rules daily - how to behave and control the population in public places, pharmacies, supermarkets, high-speed trains, and factories. New problems appeared: for example, what to do if several phones are registered for one person?
Promotional video:
On February 15, the system test was completed and it was activated for the entire province. On the first day, she issued a million codes, after three days their number exceeded 10 million. The management called Li Hao and invited him to rest, but he refused - the first 24 hours of the system's operation were critical. Finally, a colleague called the HR department, and several colleagues forcibly shoved him into a car and sent him home. When he drove up to the house in the early morning, the district guard, having learned what he was doing, stood up and saluted him.
The very next day the system showed its effectiveness - the first train after the introduction of quarantine arrived in Hangzhou from Guiyang with passengers with green codes. Previously, it took a long time to get a health certificate. The emergence of such a system allowed the province to become the first in the country to restore work.
To be continued…
Alexander the Greek
