Government fires one app after another, but can citizens follow?

The current government contract for the contact investigation around Covid-19 expires next Tuesday. Since May 2020, this has been in the hands of a consortium of call centers and health insurance funds. Two years and at least 156 million euros (excl. VAT) later, they made more than 7.92 million phone calls and made 175,000 home visits (see inset)† In contact research, Covid-19 patients are asked who they had recently had contact with, in order to inform those people of the risk.

The Flemish Agency for Care and Health, which manages the contact investigation, is now switching to a ‘hybrid’ form. The contact center of the Flemish government can take care of the telephones, but there will mainly be a new team of thirty agents who can both call and visit home. A new government contract is being issued for this.

The GovApp application plays an important role in this adapted operation. The government wants to reach the people who have tested positive via this smartphone app. ‘Its purpose is to make the contact tracing process more efficient,’ says Barbara Van Den Haute, administrator-general of Digitaal Vlaanderen, the agency that developed the app. ‘The app is cheaper than sending text messages and you are not limited by 160 characters per message. From the app it is also easier to refer to other websites, including My Citizen Profile.’

When taking a covid test and the results are announced, people will be asked to install GovApp. ‘For people who cannot (or cannot) use the app, telephone and personal contact research will still be necessary,’ says Joris Moonens of the Agency for Care and Health.

Accumulation

GovApp, of which Digitaal Vlaanderen cannot say how much the development cost, comes on top of CoronAlert. It was launched in September 2020 and is also a digital extension of the contact investigation, albeit in a different way. By exchanging codes between smartphones, CoronAlert registers who you have been in contact with in a completely anonymous way. When there is a risk of contamination, the system itself creates a notification. At GovApp, the source of the report is a government agency. In addition to GovApp and CoronAlert, the CovidSafe app also plays a role in the range of government and health applications. They keep the Covid Safe Ticket (the CST).

All three apps come from the government and deal with health and covid-19. CoronAlert normally comes first in the chain, because it carries out the contact investigation. When someone is infected, GovApp steps in to report a test result (which is also possible via CoronAlert) and to take the first step towards collecting recent contacts. After that, the CST of an infected person is temporarily withdrawn in CovidSafe.

This accumulation of health-related government apps can be complex for many. But Digitaal Vlaanderen believes that the introduction of GovApp makes things easier because government reports are centralized in it.

“The GovApp is not a corona app either,” says Joris Moonens of the Agency for Care and Health. “It must also remain usable outside corona in order to be able to send important information from the government to citizens in a safe way.”

In the meantime, it became known that Flemish Prime Minister Jan Jambon (N-VA) wants to launch an additional app on the next Flemish holiday. ‘This should become the government counter in his or her telephone for every citizen’, answered Jambon to a question from Flemish Member of Parliament Brecht Warnez (CD&V). The items from the online ‘My Citizen Profile’ will end up there and it will also be a place for information about local events and city services, among other things.

Trouble and cursing

‘This is reminiscent of the influx of hotlines that we have seen in recent years,’ says Filip De Rynck, professor of public administration at Ghent University. ‘A separate point was set up for each problem and everyone was expected to know where to report something. It’s a bureaucratic way of solving problems.’

‘You risk the same with apps. In the past there was hardly any digitization within the government, but there was a very strong compartmentalisation. You had to go from one counter to another. Now that compartmentalization threatens to be digitized. If you have to control a different channel for different government affairs, this can further undermine trust in the government. Not everyone can just use those apps, they can be a barrier even for those who are handy with other digital applications.’

‘When people feel that they cannot fulfill their rights because an IT application is in the way, this can further undermine trust in government. The assumption is often made that citizens will always find their way, if necessary with some effort and cursing. Unfortunately that is not the case.’

De Rynck points out that the online application ‘My Citizen Profile’ (to which the ‘GovApp’ can refer) is an improvement, because it offers one access to different services. ‘Thanks to this kind of integration, we are further along than we were a few years ago, but the risk remains of coming up with something new with every crisis. Is that necessary when many can also simply go through “My Citizen Profile”?’

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