IGF 2020 OF #32 Trustworthy internet technologies against COVID-19

Information

Session

Time:

Friday, 6 November, 2020 - 08:00 to 09:00 UTC

Room:

Room 2

About this Session:

Technology has played a key role in the COVID-19 global health crisis outbreak and it will play an even more important role in supporting countries and citizens to overcome the crisis. This session will look at how effective technology-based measures have been in tackling the spread of the virus; how they have ensured the respect of laws and fundamental rights; and what lessons can be learned for the development of trustworthy internet technologies and their use for public policy purposes

Organization's Website:

https://ec.europa.eu

Theme:

Trust

Subtheme:

E-Health

Panel - Auditorium - 60 Min

Description:

The public health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented global challenge to health care systems and our way of life. Digital technologies have played an important role since the beginning of the crisis outbreak and they will play an even more important role in supporting countries and citizens to manage and overcome the crisis. In response to this emergency outbreak, the European Commission has taken a series of initiatives to coordinate a common European approach for the use of mobile applications and mobile data in the context of the coronavirus crisis. The European Commission adopted a Recommendation to support Member States in exiting the COVID-19 crisis and supported European Member States in preparing and implementing a common European Toolbox for the use of mobile applications for contact tracing and warning. These instruments were flexible and agile enough to allow the European Union to promptly react and adapt its response to the emergency. Starting from the COVID-19 crisis experience, this open forum aims at discussing how technologies can play a role in a global health crisis and yet continue to respect human rights and enact principles and values such as privacy, trust, openness, transparency, decentralisation, user control and inclusiveness. The session will look at how effective technology-based measures taken in different countries and regions in the world have been in tackling the spread of the virus; how they have ensured the respect of laws and fundamental rights; and what lessons can be learned for the development of trustworthy internet technologies and their use for public policy purposes. The European Commission has also funded several projects developing technologies and apps to fight the COVID-19 outbreak, notably in the context of the Next Generation Internet (NGI) programme. The open forum will be the occasion to present to the audience concrete projects, also from Asia, and to reflect on lessons learnt and way forward.

Organizers:

European Commission

Speakers:

Gemma Carolillo - Deputy Head of Unit, Next-Generation Internet, DG CNECT

Dirk-Willem van Gulik - Special advisor to NL government for COVID-19 tracing apps

Dr. Huang Yen-Nun Director for Research Center for Information Technology Innovation (CITI), Academia Sinica, Taiwan and Hong-Wei Jyan - Director General, Department of Cyber Security of Taiwan, responsible for the development of the apps on COVID-19

Jelena Malinina - Digital health, policy officer at BEUC, the European consumer organisation

Onsite Moderator:

Giovanni Rimassa, Martel Media

Online Moderator:

Esteve Sanz, European Commission

Rapporteur:

Esteve Sanz, European Commission

SDGs:

GOAL 3: Good Health and Well-Being
GOAL 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

Report

1. Key Policy Questions and related issues:

How can contact tracing apps and covid-related technologies be trustworthy and respects fundamental rights?

How can it be ensured that all key information on app development is publicly available?

How can it be ensured that the technology is user-friendly to people with different technical and physical abilities?

2. Summary of Issues Discussed:

Early on in the European Commission’s (EC) response to this emergency outbreak, it adopted a Recommendation to support Member States in exiting the COVID-19 crisis and supported European Member States in preparing and implementing a common European Toolbox for the use of mobile applications for contact tracing and warning. The discussion at the IGF open session focussed on guiding principles, including that apps should be voluntarily installed and that the information provided voluntarily; they should be effective, without tracking people’s movements; data should not be stored longer than 14 days, a retention period which corresponds to the contagion period. Discussion of principles also covered the preservation of privacy of the users and interoperability, which is important as the disease does not know national boundaries.

3. Key Takeaways:

Developing a trust framework is essential for the uptake of digital technologies, in particular when they are meant to be used in areas like healthcare. Form the recent experience, providing solutions that increase transparency is important. For example the Tech Review Facility, launched by the EC with some members of the Next Generation Internet (NGI) community, provides independent security and privacy analysis of COVID-19 related technology. The team performs testing and provides advice on the development of contact tracing apps based on security, privacy, accessibility and compliance with legal requirements. Through the platform there is also a drive to stimulate use of open source and gather feedback from the community of experts.

In the Netherlands, tracing app ‘CoronaMelder’ has been installed by nearly 5 million people. Through public surveys, it was found that people trust the app because of the open-source and transparent development. Due to public concern around privacy, the app had to be built in with a ‘privacy by design’ concept with a decentralised and collaborative approach, design is now available for further applications.

Not all countries are conducting an open and inclusive approach to app development. Trust is essential for the adoption of contact tracing apps, or people will not opt in. Transparency is critical to show how the technology is made, but it is important this information is publicly available for non-experts.

It is important for everyone to access Covid-19 contact tracing apps, thus accessibility and inclusiveness must be addressed as well.

4. Policy Recommendations or Suggestions for the Way Forward:

What policy sector(s) does this fall under? (leave blank if not sure):

Economic

Social-cultural

Technical

Overarching governance issues

Issue and Recommendation:

The Covid-19 pandemic created an unprecedented global challenge to health care systems and our way of life. Digital technologies play an important role in supporting countries and citizens to manage and overcome the crisis and they will be pivotal in ensuring the continuation of many social and economic activities in the recovery phase. In the EU, contact tracing is implemented at the national level and there are 19 initial contact tracing apps in the Member States, with a range of uptake. Currently there around 55 million EU citizens using these apps. One of the preliminary conclusions from this experience is that trust is essential for citizens to adopt and use the contact tracing apps and in general digital technologies. To create a trust framework, the design and development of The EU approach to digital technologies needs to be is founded on key EU values of privacy and accessibility. In the EU, for example, European Data Protection Rules, in particular the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), should continue need to be at the centre of any development, including when new laws are passed. There is also a need to explore open source solutions, which allow gathering feedback from the community of experts. Transparency, including on the data model, is key in any proper technological solution. If citizens do not trust private sector solutions, new innovative forms of development and procurement should be explored. Digital health must address the needs of all people and be accessible to all. Engaging developers into developing accessible tools is a challenge which is currently not being met – both the developers community and the public sector must take action to make technological solutions truly inclusive.

5. Other Initiatives Addressing the Session Issues:

Initiative:

This session dealt with Trustworthy technologies to fight Covid-19. Other than the EC approach presented, there are no other regional initiatives of this kind.

6. Final Speakers:

Mrs Gemma Carolillo, Deputy Head of the Next Generation Internet Unit at the European Commission
Mr Dirk-Willem van Gulik, Consulting Expert at the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport on the corona crisis response
Mrs Jelena Malinina, Digital Health Policy Officer at the European Consumer Organisation
Dr Yen-Nun Huang, Director for Research Center for Information Technology Innovation (CITI), Academia Sinica, Taiwan, and Mr Hong-wei Jyan, Director General of Department of Cyber Security, Executive Yuan. Taiwan
MODERATOR: Dr Giovanni Rimassa, Chief Innovation Officer, Martel Innovate

7. Reflection to Gender Issues:

Digital health must address the needs of all people and be accessible to all. For certain national contact tracing apps, testing was performed with people with different skills and ability. Jelena Malinina, Policy Officer The European Consumer Organisation said: “There is no such thing as an average person. We are a society and there are different citizens and consumers with very different needs, capacity, values and goals when it comes to use of any kind of digital health tools. We insist that digital health solutions including COVID-19 contact tracing apps must correspond to a variety of user preferences.”

8. Session Outputs:

NGI supported applications for human centric tech in times of crisis: https:/www.ngi.eu/blog/2020/04/03/next-generation-internet-human-centric-tech-in-times-of-crisis/
EC Tech Review Facility: https://www.ngi.eu/news/2020/07/21/introducing-reviewfacilityeu/
The Netherlands national Covid-19 tracing app ‘CoronaMelder’, which has been installed by nearly 5 million people https://coronamelder.nl/en/
Being a relatively small island, Taiwan has focused on tracing potential cases at the border and gathering grass-roots participation from citizens. For border control, there is collaboration with the Telecommunications industry and several state institutions to monitor quarantines. The information is not stored after the end of the person’s quarantine period. The central command centre has a visualisation of the isolation types as well as any travelers who avoid quarantine. This is visible only to the centre and the police and is not publicly available. The system has high security standards. Although a contact-tracing app has been developed ouside the Google/Apple system, it is not in use as cases are very low. However, if the Covid-19 situation persists, it may be deployed at the end of the year.
EXSCALATE is operational at the Italian Supercomputer in CINECA, analysing COVID-19 proteins based on data available from the scientific community in order to accelerate the search of an effective therapy against the pandemic virus: https://www.cineca.it/en/hot-topics/supercomputer-vs-coronavirus

9. Group Photo:

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IGF 2020 OF #32 Trustworthy internet technologies against COVID-19

Information