The Indian government aims at countering the criticism which it faced over privacy of the user data stored in the Arogya Setu app
The Government of India today, i.e., Tuesday, May 26, 2020 announced to open the source code for the Android version of Aarogya Setu app. The code will be available after midnight tonight on open source code repository Github.
The move is aimed at countering the criticism which the Government had faced over privacy of the user data stored in the app. This will keep false claims about breach of user data at bay.
All the subsequent updates will also be made open source through this repository and the iOS and KaiOS (on Jio Phone) versions of the app will also be made open source soon. As of now, 95% of the app’s users are on Android.
Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) – Amitabh Kant said, “This is a unique thing to be done. No other govt product anywhere in the world has been open sourced at this scale. Today its scale and size is 115 million. It cuts across phones, IVRS. Only product available in 12 languages. All covid-19 related apps put together, Aarogya Setu is bigger than all of them.”
Taking it to twitter, he tweeted,
#AarogyaSetu, India’s #Covid_19 contact tracing app is now open source. Transparency, privacy & security have been the core design principles. It has 115 mln users in 12 languages. All of this in 8 weeks. It has identified 3500 hotspots at sub-post office level.Robust technology!
— Amitabh Kant (@amitabhk87) May 26, 2020
Most importantly, the Government has also said that it will give a cash reward of Rs. 1 lakh to developer who reports a bug in the app. The cash reward will give an opportunity to engineers, designers, epidemiologists and policy experts to suggest improvements in the app.
As of now, the Aarogya Setu app is installed on 115 million smartphones. The app has allowed the Government to predict over 3,000 hotspots at sub-post office level and alerted over 1,40,000 Indians of possible infections.
For the records, Aarogya Setu app was launched on April 2, 2020. It is a digital service, primarily a mobile application, developed by the Government of India, which aims at connecting Coronavirus (COVID-19) related health services with the people of India. It is designed to augment the initiatives of the Government of India by informing the people of their potential risk of COVID-19 infection and the best practices to be followed to stay healthy, as well as providing them relevant and curated medical advisories pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, India recorded — fresh cases and — casualties today. Maharashtra remains the worst hit State with a total of 54,758 cases and 1,792 casualties. It reported 2,091 fresh cases and 97 casualties in the past 24 hours. Tamil Nadu is the second worst hit State with 17,728 cases and 127 casualties. In the past 24 hours, Tamil Nadu recorded 646 new cases and 9 casualties. Gujarat is the third most affected State with 14,460 cases and 888 cases.
Besides, Uttar Pradesh (U.P.) reported 197 new cases in the last 24 hours. The National Capital registered 412 new cases today. The total number of cases in Delhi is now 14,465 and there have been 288 casualties.
Separately, the Minister of Civil Aviation – Hardeep Singh Puri said that Indian Airports have handled 325 departures and 283 arrivals since the restart of domestic flights on May 25, 2020. A total of 41,673 passengers have travelled till today evening.
Hardeep Singh tweeted,
Smooth operations of domestic civil aviation.
— Hardeep Singh Puri (@HardeepSPuri) May 26, 2020
Our airports have handled 325 departures & 283 arrivals with 41,673 passengers till 5pm on 26 May 2020, the 2nd day after recommencement of domestic flights. Final report for the day will be prepared after details come in at midnight
As per the latest updates, there are 1,47,144 cases and there have been 4,197 casualties in the country.
