Government publishes timeline and process for corona app

The government is setting up a supervisory committee to supervise the corona app for contact investigation. The government has created a timeline that indicates when which steps will be taken in building the applications.

Earlier this week, the government announced that it wanted to test a first proof-of-concept of a corona app at the end of May. Now the government writes that it wants to achieve such an app in four steps. Several experts have also been recruited to oversee the source code and development of the app.

The first step that the government wants to take is to clarify the requirements that the GGD sets for digital support. During the ‘appathon’, in which seven parties presented their ideas for a contact tracing app, the needs of the GGD were hardly considered. In the second phase of the step-by-step plan, ‘the right people are brought together’. The third phase looks specifically at how important rights are protected, such as security and privacy. It also considers fundamental rights and national security. Finally, the government wants to ‘further work out what is required from a behavioral point of view’ for the app.

The government wants the proof-of-concept of the app to be tested on a ‘limited scale’ already. Not only should a working version be ready by then, but it will also be used practically. It is not known on what scale and for how many or which citizens this will happen.

A team of external experts is currently studying ‘all available source codes’. It is not known which source codes those are, but at least they include the source codes that were presented during and after the appathon. The experts have different disciplines. There is someone who controls the backend, an open source expert, a technical architect, and three designers.

In addition to the existing experts, the government wants to set up a supervisory committee that ‘advices the government’. Nothing is known about this at the moment, except that the experts have knowledge of virology and epidemiology.

The government previously said that the corona app will use the api that Google and Apple are currently developing. The ministry started a tender last month, but after a public ‘appathon’ there were still many problems with the draft proposals. They almost never met the requirements of the government and a lot of information was still missing.