People
Tim Roberts
Partner & Managing Director, UK Country Co-Leader
London
For UK citizens, here's a close-to-home example: sign up for the imminent NHS COVID-19 app and help track infection. This has the potential to create a pathway to releasing lockdown, selectively and based on evidence, in tandem with an accelerating testing programme. The NHS is benefitting from collaboration with private sector tech firms, through its digital arm, NHSX.
But on the other hand if you use the app, what are you giving up? And if companies allow or encourage staff to use the app, to protect their health and contribute to the wider public health effort, how will their privacy compliance be evaluated in the future?
More questions than answers at this stage, depending on how this app, and others like it, will work. But the proposal to make the app's source code public is a welcome step.