How governments can get it right: Fighting COVID-19 with digital technology

To counter the Corona pandemic, many leaders are hoping digital technologies can be part of the solution. While this strategy shows significant potential, it will not succeed in the long-term without true digital responsibility. It should be a key task to developers, policy makers and further involved stakeholders to deliberately show digital responsibility to their prospective target group –through transparency, openness, building in privacy- and security-by-design, and a clear sense for justice. Only by demonstrating their trustworthiness to the wider public will these technologies reach a significant adoption rate and become an important step on our way out of this crisis.

Earlier this week, the German government chose to centrally collect and analyze data with an app on citizens' phones. Less than 48 hours later, the German government decided to take a decentralized approach to the tracing app for tracking Covid 19 infections. The public outcry against the approach of gathering peoples' data centrally was explosive. Experts said, such a secretive approach of non-transparent programming and using a central database would lead to a lower acceptance rate.

Similar stories unfolded in other countries: In Israel for example, the high court ruled the practice of gathering all data in current form illegal – and required the government to put respective laws into place. In the Netherlands, the Appathon was widely criticized by academics, activists and the wider public and eventually failed. For the majority of the selected apps, both security and privacy flaws were revealed – in some cases even non-compliant with the self-set principles. In the UK, voices criticized the central design of the NHSX approach and questioned if the national agency would be able to develop an app like this with the required functionalities and in time.

Why are these debates so heated? The combination of potential and risk makes this topic so hotly debated. This is more than an academic dispute. It is about the fundamental question on which principles technology should be build on to help society in a state of emergency (and beyond). Do citizens have to reveal more of their data when the state urgently needs insights? How can valuable health data be secured? Which approach can avoid exclusion or even discrimination of certain groups of people?

It makes complete sense to use the existing infrastructure of smartphone technology and connectability to fight this deadly pandemic. It could be one important element among others in helping society return to the new normal. What we must avoid is for the wider public to mistrust the approach in the first place. To ensure digital tech benefits all people, governments must consider three factors: (a) is the developing organization trustworthy and capable in the first place, (b) does the approach live up to fundamental standards of privacy and security and (c) is the technology open and transparent.

1. Governments must ensure trustworthiness and capability of the developing organization. The contract-tracing apps must reach a critical mass to detect many infections, immunity passports rely on adoption of users, so do most other approaches. Even in Singapore, where people trust the state and technology more than in many other countries, only one in six has installed the national app. Hence, the developing party needs to be chosen by the level of digital responsibility they have applied in past undertakings – since past behavior is the strongest indicator for people's trust.
2. Approaches need to ensure they live up to high levels of privacy and security. In Europe for example by complying with the European Union guidance on how to implement said technology. It focuses not only on privacy like GDPR but also on respecting basic rights like non-discriminatory behavior. If knowledge is power, the distribution of information is an act of democracy. All of the above technologies could have far-reaching consequences in our everyday lives. For example when granting certain groups, e.g., immune individuals, special rights.
3. From a technology point of view, it should be a key task to developers, policy makers and further involved stakeholders to deliberately build trust with their prospective target group – e.g., through transparency and openness. Only by demonstrating their trustworthiness to the wider public will these technologies reach a significant adoption rate and become an important step on our way our of this crisis. This could be achieved by disclosing the underlying functionalities and code – if not to general public by being open source, then at a minimum to important representatives of civil society.

This text was first published on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-governments-can-get-right-fighting-covid-19-digital-kai-hermsen/