More than a week after its launch, the French contact tracking application against the StopCovid coronavirus, has been downloaded 1.5 million times, Secretary of State for Digital Cédric O said on Thursday. only resulted in "a handful" of notifications,
"Obviously, in a context where the prevalence of the epidemic is decreasing very quickly, the incentive of people to install the application is limited", recognized Cédric O, after the presentation of a report from the National Council digital on health data.
Planned developments
"We will continue to make sure that there are people who download it, possibly consider developments, and then if there is ever a second wave, it will be necessary to take a certain number of initiatives to delay the installation of the application, ”he said. “On this subject of health utility, it is no longer really up to the Secretary of State for Digital to pilot the deployment of this tool, but rather to the health sphere. "
The effectiveness of the smartphone application depends on the number of people who use it, even if the government considers it useful "from the first downloads", especially in urban areas.
The cost and terms of hosting the application in question
While the government reports on the number of downloads or activations, digital specialists had estimated last week that the number of users constantly using the application could be much lower. "We do not know who activates his Bluetooth or not. The figures that have circulated on social networks do not correspond to much, "replied Cédric O.
He promised all transparency on the cost and the terms of hosting the application, while the Anticor association alerted the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) on suspicion of favoritism concerning the award of the public contract to Outscale, a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes.
The #StopCovid application, which was developed for free, costs more than 200,000 euros for hosting. A price much higher than market practices. Anticor has seized the national financial parquet.https: //t.co/IXgVzUW5JL
- Anticor (@anticor_org) June 10, 2020"For the moment, the State has signed nothing, has not spent a single euro"
"We are still working on the markets which will make it possible to formalize the deployment of the application", developed free of charge by officials of Inria and companies free of charge, he said. "For the moment, the State has not signed anything, has not spent a single euro", and the order of magnitude of maintenance and accommodation costs estimated between 200,000 and 300,000 euros per month during a hearing in the Senate is "probably very grossed up".
Wanted by the government to fight the spread of the coronavirus and highly criticized by those who fear a surveillance company, StopCovid must allow a user who finds himself contaminated to automatically warn everyone he has encountered within a meter , for more than 15 minutes, in the past two weeks.
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