WWW.QNS.COM RIDGEWOOD TIMES JANUARY 21, 2021 7
Holden joins public advocate’s call for city to
improve COVID-19 vaccine site accessibility
BY ANGÉLICA ACEVEDO
AACEVEDO@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
@QNS
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams on Wednesday,
Jan. 13, was joined by Queens City Councilman
Robert Holden and Manhattan Borough
President Gale Brewer in a virtual press conference
to call on the city to better streamline the COVID-19
vaccination process and make registration more
accessible.
Williams said he is “extremely frustrated and
angry” with the city and state’s vaccine rollout,
while noting the “vast majority of blame” is on the
federal government.
“We had six months or more to get this right,”
Williams said. “At each level, there were things
that could have been done to make up for the lack
of leadership on the level above. I’m not looking
for a perfect system … But we want to see a system
that is actually the best that we can do at the moment
in time, and that’s not what’s happening.”
Williams said there is currently a “decentralized
patchwork” for people who are eligible to
receive the vaccination to make an appointment.
“This fails a basic accessibility requirement
and responsibility for government,” Williams
said, adding that a digital accessibility bill
he introduced last year would require city
government websites to be more accessible for
more users.
Holden, who represents City Council District 30
in Queens and is chair of the Council’s Committee
on Technology, sent Mayor Bill de Blasio a letter
earlier in the week where he urges the city to utilize
all of its available resources for what should
be a “wartime effort” to get people vaccinated.
Holden particularly took issue with the city’s
Vaccine Finder website, calling it a “glorified store
locator.”
“One of the biggest problems in the city portal
is nothing more than a glorified store locator,”
Holden said. “The user puts in their ZIP code — I
did this yesterday — and is redirected to a thirdparty
website. From there, they have to fill out
a form with multiple steps only to find out that
there’s no appointments available. Many times
people need to repeat this process dozens of times,
and I did that yesterday. It was very frustrating.”
He said the city should have built a portal that
had private institutions integrated with their system
to only show locations where appointments
are available.
Holden also pointed to Beta NYC, a civic organization
advocating to improve civic design, technology
and data, who found that the city isn’t tapping
into all of its available resources effectively.
Noel Hidalgo, co-founder of Beta NYC, joined the
call and said he spoke with several tech workers
within the administration who raised concerns
over the technology being used to set up vaccine
appointments but were “marginalized.”
“These sites keep on failing because the city’s
best service designers, the technologists and
information managers, are really sitting on the
sidelines,” Hidalgo said. “You can’t legislate good
design, as much as I appreciate all of the pieces
of legislation that are coming out there. But you
can ensure that they go through a process that
reduces the likelihood of releasing a product that
is completely full of bugs. There is no technology
Councilman Robert Holden and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. QNS fi le photos
cure to what ails these websites, there are only
practices that this administration has developed,
and that H+H and DOH should have been learning
months ago.”
Hidalgo emphasized that Civic Service Design,
pioneered by the mayor’s administration through
the Office of Economic Opportunity, should be
leading the efforts.
“These are the city’s best technology information
designers and they’re sitting on the sidelines like
Colin Kaepernick,” Hidalgo said. “The ignorance
and not implementing their award-winning toolkit
is offensive to anyone who’s worked within government
technology within this administration.”
Brewer emphasized that many seniors are
having a hard time navigating the city and state
websites to set up their appointments, and are not
sure which site would benefit them the most.
While the city directs individuals to their
Vaccine Finder webpage for all of the available
information regarding the vaccine in the five boroughs,
the state has its own tool to help individuals
determine whether they are eligible to receive
it and where they can set up an appointment to
get vaccinated.
Brewer added that it’s also taken some people
more than 30 minutes to set up appointments via
the COVID vaccine call lines. People have since
reported even longer wait times.
“Of course, on the federal level, there’s a supply
issue,” Brewer said. “But we have no reason to
have a technology issue.”
The mayor and Gov. Andrew Cuomo have emphasized
that the federal government is giving
the state about 300,000 vaccines per week for the
more than 7 million people currently eligible. As
a result, vaccine supply and appointments are
limited.
But Williams concluded that there are ways
to fix the “technology failures” with better communication
between the city and state, as well as
between city agencies. He also recommended increasing
staffing to support the new systems and
having government agencies work with advocacy
organizations to spread accurate information.
“As many have said, it’s not simply a vaccine
that will help us move through the COVID-19
crisis — it’s vaccinations and access to it,” said Williams.
“And what we’ve seen is, especially from
the governor and mayor, is a failure of outreach,
failure of putting the right bureaucracy in place,
and messaging. These two men have to get on the
same page. Now.”
The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
noted the vaccine rollout, like the city’s entire
health apparatus, is a massive undertaking requiring
the resources of multiple agencies working
together.
During his press conference on Monday, Jan. 11,
the mayor was asked about making the appointment
process simpler.
“We absolutely want the simplest possible system.
Folks who are going through a lot, we want
them to have as easy an experience as possible
making their appointments,” said de Blasio.
But he added they also have to keep in mind that
they are required by law to collect certain information
from individuals getting vaccinated.
“We obviously have to get the fact that people fit
in the priority situation that we’re talking about
now with 1A and 1B,” de Blasio said. “So there are
some challenges there, but what we do find as we
put any system into play that we improve it as
we go along based on customer feedback, so I’m
certain that’s going to happen here. … We do have
now this one unified site, nyc.gov/vaccinefinder,
that will allow people a single point that they can
go find the sites, make the appointment. But again,
we’ll keep improving it as we go along.”
Jessica Tisch, commissioner of the Department
of Information Technology and Telecommunications,
echoed the mayor’s comments and spoke
about the city’s Vaccine Finder, which she said
can be thought of as an “information aggregation”
tool.
“The vaccine finder is intended to aggregate
each provider’s locations and make that data
available in one place to New Yorkers who want
to look through multiple providers to see if an
appointment is available,” Tisch said. “That said
each provider does manage its own schedules, its
own registration and its own appointments.”
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