There were technical problems at the Vienna vaccination service around the registration of educational staff.
The City of Vienna originally wanted 35,000 teachers and elementary educators in Vienna to be given the Corona vaccination. But now university lecturers and employees should also be vaccinated, provided they had registered for it on Monday. The main reason for this was a technical problem.
How the confusion began
In the vaccination platform, in which one could pre-register, there was a category for teachers and “educational staff”. Colleges and universities were also included in the “educational staff”. Many people had registered in this group. These people then received – together with the teachers and elementary educators – an email that they could register for the corona vaccination.
According to a tweet from Mario Dujakovic, the media spokesman for City Councilor Peter Hacker, university employees were to be rated as “educational staff”. Both together led to the WU Vienna and the works council of the University of Vienna sending relevant information to the lecturers.
This is what the registration form for the vaccination appointments looked like
Technical overload
In the technical system of the vaccination registration platform, these were also included in the “Educational staff” category. When the error was noticed, this was changed by the city of Vienna and university employees were asked to cancel their Covid 19 vaccination appointment bookings. One spoke of a “false report”. The prioritization group “pupils, students, university staff and adult education” was introduced after the problem was noticed.
It is unclear how many university employees have registered in the meantime. This is not clear from the registration data. In any case, the system was partially overloaded and the portal temporarily collapsed completely on Monday, so that it was no longer possible to log in.
“Misunderstanding” and sorry
On Wednesday, Dujakovic, media spokesman for the city council, communicated on Twitter that it had been a “misunderstanding”. They say they want to apologize for the “contradicting and confusing communication”. He emphasizes that university employees were “basically not planned”, but “due to the technical problem”, if they have already registered, they will still be contacted by the Vienna Vaccination Service about a specific appointment. Everyone who has registered for the corona vaccination under “Educational staff” can attend the vaccination appointment, it is said.
“The current pandemic is an enormous pressure situation for all Viennese, including in the administration. Of course, mistakes can happen. It is important to learn from it and to find concrete solutions, ”the city council's media office told futurezone.
(Thread on vaccinations with educational staff) Time to say sorry. After this misunderstanding arose, we immediately started looking for the causes of the sometimes contradicting and confusing communication. #CoronavirusAT #wien
– Mario Dujaković (@mariodujakovic) March 3, 2021
No review
In general, the technical problem shows some weaknesses in the pre-vaccination registration platform, which could not be entirely unproblematic in the future: For example, the information that people provide is not checked when the data is entered. This allows people to make vaccination appointments that are actually not yet their turn.
Neither whether the teachers are teachers nor whether the university employees are university employees was checked or recorded during registration. Nikolaus Forgo, university professor at the University of Vienna, states: “There are many, also legal, questions about the implementation of the database that have become painfully obvious here.”
