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For almost a week, citizens in Hessen have been able to register online for the vaccination against the corona virus - at least in theory.
In practice, however, the vaccination registration system and the hotlines that were connected collapsed within a very short time.
The rush of those willing to vaccinate was too great.
According to the state government, there were millions of hits when hundreds of thousands of users tried again and again to log in.
According to the Interior Ministry, there was an “expected overload” of the systems.
It doesn't just affect Hesse.
In the Free State of Thuringia, another vaccination registration system had already failed the week before, those responsible brought hackers into the field as an explanation.
In Saxony, too, the internet portal for registration stopped repeatedly.
In Brandenburg there is no online system at all, just an overloaded telephone hotline.
The series can be continued.
In short: Almost every federal state has launched its own vaccination registration system and almost all of them have problems.
Currently, the masses cannot get an appointment at all.
But even the relatively small population group of over 80s is driving the vaccination registration solutions of the federal states into an "expected overload".
And that when the real rush should only start in a few weeks.
The question arises why federal chaos is breaking out again.
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Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU), that much can be said, had apparently planned very differently.
In autumn he had already thought about how the vaccination registration could be made uniform across the country - without any federal extra sausages and own goals.
The experts from the Ministry of Health selected the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV).
Because it actually has the task of carrying out joint projects for the national associations of statutory health insurance physicians.
The nationwide appointment hotline 116117, for example, is such a project - and thanks to this hotline, the KBV already has experience in organizing appointments for many patients in practices nationwide.
The Minister of Health wanted software for everyone
Consequently, according to Spahn's plan, the KBV could also take over the software organization and provide it for the scheduling.
At least that was the resolution of the Conference of Health Ministers, which was passed at the beginning of November.
According to this, the KBV should contribute a “standardized module” that the associations of statutory health insurance physicians at the state level should then use to allocate vaccination appointments.
But then the federal states' desire for their own solutions got in the way.
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"Well, it was an offer on our part," explains KBV spokesman Roland Stahl.
“Of course we cannot force the federal states to use it.” Currently, the KBV module is still used by Saxony-Anhalt, Baden-Württemberg, Hamburg and KV Westfalen Lippe in North Rhine-Westphalia.
According to the Ministry of Health, the standardized hotline 116117 is “basically” suitable in almost all federal states for “making an appointment at a regional vaccination center”.
Why the countries prefer to set up their own call centers, online portals, software solutions, is not known either.
An answer can be found in Lower Saxony.
In the past, they have not only had positive experiences with the availability of the 116117 hotline, they say.
They want to avoid overloading the hotline.
That is why a company from Lower Saxony has now been commissioned and it is assumed that the system is on a “secure basis” - if it starts at all.
Because Lower Saxony only gives online appointments from the end of January.
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After all, they wanted to inform the over-80s by letter, but then had to find out that there was no reliable address file available.
The same program as in Hessen - only in green
Where so much false local patriotism can lead is also shown by the example of Hesse mentioned at the beginning: Until a week ago, the KBV solution was intended to be used.
But then the federal state decided to set up its own solution based on the CIVENTO system, programmed by the Darmstadt company Saascom.
The Darmstadt-based IT journalist Volker Weber describes how well this worked in his blog VoWe.net.
After the portal, which is on a server at a municipal IT service provider in Kassel, initially collapsed, the comparison with the data from the identity card did not work later.
And then confirmation emails arrived too late.
"If we are so terribly bad", asks Weber, "why do we multiply the number of errors by the number of provincial princes?"
Things didn't go much better in Saxony either.
The software from Hessen is apparently also in use there, visually identical to the Hessian solution - only in Saxon green.
And as in Hesse, the procurement portal could only be reached slowly in Saxony for several days.
Anyone who managed to make it through the several pages long appointment process and had entered all personal data was still not given an appointment “due to the current workload of the vaccination centers and the amount of vaccine available”.
Saxony decided against the nationwide system, explains the responsible Ministry of Social Affairs, because they wanted to combine the scheduling of appointments with the logistics, i.e. the current stock of vaccination doses.
The system only releases as many appointments as there are vaccination doses.
As soon as several vaccines are approved in Germany, the system should also be able to differentiate between several vaccines.
Late confirmations, expired vaccination doses
The state of Thuringia had already decided against the federal offer in November and instead preferred to build its own system.
According to the KV Thuringia, one did not want to burden the medical on-call service via 116117 "with the additional booking by telephone".
That doesn't sound like a good experience with the federal offer.
The company's own internet portal went online on December 30th, but not for very long.
On the day it started, the server went to its knees - 160,000 requests had overloaded it.
Several hundred citizens who had booked a vaccination appointment via the portal on the start day did not receive an email with a confirmation link.
The actually reserved appointment expired.
When the portal was available again on January 7th, according to KV Thuringia, they got the chance to be the first to book a new appointment.
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Actually, 160,000 requests in a short time are not that many for a solidly dimensioned server.
The Ministry of Health in Thuringia had the case investigated and said at the beginning of January that it was not a breakdown, but a cyber attack.
Nevertheless, the system has been strengthened since then - also so that it can withstand if even more people want to arrange a vaccination appointment via the portal in the future.
Berlin decided on the most complicated solution
Finally, in Berlin they managed to build what is probably the most complex solution of all.
Health Senator Dilek Kalayci (SPD) selected the French start-up Doctolib from five competitors in a tender.
The Berliners can arrange vaccination appointments via a platform or an app - but for this they first need a kind of invitation.
And it comes in the mail.
Whoever receives the letter can now book an appointment.
However, not yet for the vaccination, but only for the first conversation - personally via the Senate's hotline or online via the agency's website.
For many Berliners, however, this has so far only been a vile theory: Because there is not enough vaccine available, hardly any citizens are currently invited.
But sometimes it is not the vaccines that are missing, but those who want to be vaccinated with an appointment.
At the vaccination center in the Berlin district of Treptow, vaccine had to be thrown away - apparently because it had been drawn up in the syringes for too long and could not be used quickly enough.
It remains to be seen what happens when the big rush comes.
The federal states now only have a few weeks to get their systems ready for the "expected overload" this time.