The tool should be operational in two weeks.
Too restrictive and costly: this is, overall, the conclusion of the authorities in relation to the crisis communication tools currently available. Faced with this, the government has entrusted the creation of a WhatsApp-type tool, for crisis situations, to Frank Robben, key man in the IT architecture of health care systems and the tracing system, reports this Saturday The Free Belgium.
“We have indeed realized that communicating with citizens via SMS could only be done within a straightjacket of 140 characters and that this could be expensive for telecom operators. Inevitably, when you have 19.6 billion transactions, exchanges between healthcare providers on all citizens, it can quickly become expensive“, explains Frank Robben to our colleagues.
► Reportage | Behind the scenes of the BE-Alert operation: here is why you received an SMS this morning (07/04/2022)
Concretely, this tool should allow social security organizations to send messages to citizens, “related to health, flood risks or crises like Ukraine“, indicates Frank Robben, who specifies that “the idea is to capitalize on the CovidSafe app to create a new one“.
ArBr with Belga – Photo: Belga (illustration)
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