In an interview with journalists from BFM Business, the Secretary of State for Digital Media announced the availability date of StopCovid, the application to combat coronavirus disease.
Appointment is taken on June 2nd, after a first appearance before the deputies a week earlier.
Olivier Véran had announced on Saturday, May 2: the StopCovid application will not be ready for the start of containment, i.e. on May 11.
On the other hand, the project is still on track and the government, through the Secretary of State for Digital, has just unveiled an availability date.
If everything goes according to the government’s plans, the application will be deployed in just under a month.
The Application Will Have To Go Through Parliament and The CNIL Before Being Released
If one could, even yesterday, express doubts about its release, the StopCovid application is well and truly on the verge of becoming a reality.
Cédric O, the current Secretary of State for Digital, announced it at the microphone of BFM Business.
The development of the application is progressing “relatively well”. As a result, it is expected to enter the test phase “as early as next week”.
If all goes according to plan during the tests, the Secretary of State hopes to be able to present the application to parliamentarians “in the week of May 25”.
The government plans to deploy the application, once it has been approved by parliament, from 2 June, during the second phase of deconfinement.
The main speaker also referred to the need for validation by the CNIL (National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties).
“It will also be necessary for the CNIL to be able to speak out again as announced. We still have an important technical roadmap… We really need to pass the tests that will start next week, to make sure that it works well in the field, that it doesn’t notify too much, that it is well interconnected with the whole health system. But today we can say to ourselves that we will be ready for June 2“.
It should be remembered that the primary objective of the application is to identify people infected with the coronavirus, as well as individuals who have come into contact with them.
Thus, those who have come into contact with sick people are informed. Cédric O made a point of recalling that the development of the application is being done without the help of Apple and Google.
If the aim of the application is to offer an effective means of fighting against COVID-19, it nevertheless raises questions about the idea of generalised surveillance.
There is no doubt that parliament and the CNIL will have to play a fundamental role in its acceptance.
