Tech and Covid-19

Most EU countries have worked out the kinks in their contact-tracing apps and now offer them as part of efforts to track coronavirus infection and break the chain of transmission. The next step is ensuring the apps can connect across borders.

As contact-tracing apps prove less useful than hoped in many countries, other digital tools such as wearable fitness trackers are gaining in popularity for detecting or tracing coronavirus infection. But a reliance on such technologies comes with big questions about effectiveness and privacy.

The coronavirus lockdown caught the IT infrastructure of the European Parliament unprepared for such severe emergency conditions. The EU's parliamentary work comes with distinct political sensitivities and responsibilities for transparency that complicate the legislative process. Any measures taken to introduce digital tools now and in the future must safeguard vital democratic principles. 

Federal, state, and city governments are working with technology companies to monitor citizens during the pandemic, with no guarantee of what will happen to the data after the crisis passes. The irony is that Brazil already has a law that would protect the right to privacy – but the government is trying to delay its implementation.

From legal challenges to delays, leaks and policy reversals, the UK has stumbled in its tech response to the pandemic in the same way that it has faltered in its overall strategy, even frequently being forced to change course. A full assessment of what happened will take time, but the record thus far already offers lessons for the future.

Open-source software, transparent communication, and public-private cooperation with both large and small companies—the development of the German contact tracing app could be a model for future government IT projects.

A strong sense of regional sovereignty in the Canadian health care system may lead to different choices for technologies to track and contain the spread of the coronavirus. A multiplicity of non-interoperable apps could put their effectiveness in question and could create inconsistent approaches to privacy.

The debate over the data storage model of a coronavirus tracing app shows how the German government’s search for digital infection control tools became caught up between public health officials, privacy experts and the US tech industry.