Already in May, England had tested their COVID-19 contact-tracing app on a small island called Wright. The app lets you know quickly if someone with who you had contact with, has symptoms. Your phone connects with other phones through bluetooth, if these phones were less than two meters away from your phone. As soon as a person is having symptoms and he clicks on symptoms in the app, everyone who he has been in contact with (bluetooth-linked) will receive a message.
The app used a centralized datacenter to successfully storage the recovered data. Problems were quickly to arise as people felt like being used for testing. Even more so, people did not like the idea of a centralized datacenter owning personal information about you. The government chose to use this centralized datacenter, because the government wanted to test the quality of the app, resulting in its downfall.
Germany is following a different approach to install its Corona-Warn-App. It was launched in June. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) in Germany is the government’s central scientific institution in the field of biomedicine and is closely monitoring the Corona-Warn-App progressions. The RKI stated that 16 million people had installed it. They are going in the good direction as they learned from Englands mistakes. Germany only has the information stalled on the mobile phones itself and therefore the acceptance is higher. The only problem now is measuring the quality of the app, because of the government not knowing how many people were infected and used the app to warn others they had been in contact with.
However, there are about 83 million people in Germany, and for the app to be effective more than half of the population needs to use the app. Again the problem of success still arises. Acceptance is there, but the success depends on the quality the germans can’t measure, because of not having a centralized datacenter.
As for now, Holland is still testing their Corona-app called ‘Coronamelder’.
The problem of acceptance and quality (measuring) was described in this blog.
What to do about the problem of quality measuring? Should we make some enormous changes, such as making it mandatory for people to download the app… Wouldn’t that be a success… (hook for new research)
https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/coronavirus-app
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/16/germany-appeals-to-nation-to-download-coronavirus-app
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53485569
Hey Sander, you are touching upon a very important topic. I also tried to convince many of my German friends to install the Corona-App, but unfortunately, I kept hearing the same excuses. First of all, people see privacy issues, which is not a very argument when considered the depth of data most people share with messenger applications such as Whatsapp or Facebook. In addition, people argue that there will not be enough downloads to reach herd immunity. However, every additional person downloading the app has an impact towards reaching this goal! I really hope that the app will be successful in the Netherlands. Do you think that the Dutch population will show a similar level of acceptance compared to Germany?
Hi Svante! I agree with your points made. Answering your question I think it is more typical for Germans to listen to their government. As for the obedience of the Dutch however… In The Netherlands a lot of people who don’t necessarily disagree with the Dutch government, still don’t listen and obey the new rules installed. Their have even been quite a lot of protests lately against the new rules due to COVID-19. Also making it mandatory in the Netherlands would not make a big different, as it would for example in Norwegian countries, where people listen to their government.
really interesting article! In France, the government has developed a similar app named ‘stopcovid’. The app also worked using bluetooth and would alert you if you were in contact with someone with Covid for over 15 minutes. This app received enormous backlash from the general public who did not trust the fully anonymous aspect of the app. Many conspirationists believed it was the French government trying to track and control its people and therefore represented a restriction of freedom. This was not the case as the application was 100% anonymised and required no personal information, only bluetooth access. The app had a network effect in the sense that the efficiency of the app would increase with every additional user. This was far from the case as only 3% of the French population downloaded it (1.5 million people) which was not enough to truly track virus transmission. The app is causing further criticism as it was revealed that the maintenance and storage costs are over 200 000 euros per month.
Hi Sander,
Very interesting and current topic to cover! It is interesting to see how “Western” countries will always place privacy worries above health. If the government seems to not store your information, nor share it, then I do not believe that there should be a problem. I don’t know if you are aware, but the first country to implement such an app was Singapore. I was there at the time, and the adoption rate was extremely high. The government is considered to be more authoritarian and so the people also have a strong appreciation for the regulations. There was no question of privacy and the app was therefore the perfect testing ground for other countries to take this into consideration. I think such an app is a great idea, but you must always remember cultural values that differ per country are deep-rooted and often can not be changed no matter how good the idea is!
Hi Olivia! Yes I have read articles about the app used in Singapore. A lot of people installed it indeed. Yes I agree, this is because the government is authoritarian (I think it was more like ‘voluntary’). I agree on you saying acceptance depends on cultural values.
Thank you for this article. It is indeed a problem to have people adopt this application, but people are still way more lenient in providing all their private information on other applications, website or even now in some restaurants. I believe people do not truly see how important and how helpful this data could be, specially in the middle of a pandemic. If the government would share this app, by reassuring its population about its safety, or make it mandatory to fill it in, more results form this app will appear. It is also very true that these app work with a network effect, however elderly people should also be able to share their information if they desire in order to also know if they have been in contact with someone sick. Trainings on how to use it or volunteers could be an alternative. I do believe we should all participate in order to reduce the amount of people getting sick.
Hi Amandine! I totally agree on the importance of these apps in battling this pandemic. I also strongly agree on the social aspect of these apps, so training for elderly or volunteers who give lessons in this app. I think it should be seen less as ‘forced upon us’, but more as ‘maybe THE solution on which we all have to work on to squash this virus’.
Hi, Sander
It’s a really interesting topic, and I see the differences between regions regarding accepting such applications. That could be because of many reasons, such as cultural differences and degrees of privacy concerns. In China, there are no separate applications that track the spreading of COVID-19 but used the existing tech companies, like Alipay and WeChat. The tracking function has been integrated into the mentioned applications. Thus, everyone has a healthy code, which is needed when you travel around the country. The application has provided a unified system to collect information and simplified the checking procedure and other additional benefits. The acceptance level determine the value of the application, more people downloading the application means how effective the application.