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NEven on Friday, the federal government made a clear commitment. This was the Corona app, which is supposed to help authorities track down contact persons of infected people. Government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer said “they have great confidence in the system that is currently being tested at Fraunhofer.” By that he meant the solution that several European research institutes are currently working on and that the data will be stored centrally. With the sentence, the government demonstratively strengthened the support of the PEPP-PT initiative.
And that was necessary at that point: the original criticism of his approach had turned into a storm of outrage. Shortly before Demmer appeared in the press, the Chaos Computer Club and other network activists, Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) warned in a letter that they would no longer adopt a central approach to storing the data. Such a decision is “very problematic,” he said, and threatens to “erode” confidence in the application.
The federal government relented over the weekend. In a joint statement, Jens Spahn and Chancellor Minister Helge Braun announced Sunday that the company was now opting for decentralized data storage. A “constantly decentralized software architecture” is being promoted. This means that data from the Robert Koch Institute’s tracking application should only be saved on the user’s phone and should no longer be collected on a server. It is still uncertain whether the government has opted for the competitive DP3T approach, like the one used in Switzerland.
Help from Google and Apple
The ministerial statement gives an indication of how the course changed. Apparently, the federal government does not want to accept any loss of confidence among the population: “The use of the application by the greatest possible part of the population is the basis of its success,” he says. However, even with a decentralized approach, citizens should be able to voluntarily and anonymously “donate” data of interest to the Robert Koch Institute. It is not yet known what these are.
Now it boils down to an application that “uses the programming interfaces of the major mobile operating system providers that will be available shortly and at the same time integrates epidemiological quality assurance in the best possible way,” the statement continues. With major vendors, IT giants are likely Google and Apple are destined.
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They are currently working on adapting their operating systems to make tracking applications work smoothly. Both companies advocate a decentralized approach. This does not mean that the data itself has to be collected by Google or Apple. The application of a government agency like the Robert Koch Institute could do the same, even one that continues to rely on a central focus. However, it should make things easier for the federal government to provide decentralized storage.
Big disappointment at PEPP-PT
The change in direction of the federal government is a defeat for the European initiative PEPP-PT. A few weeks ago, great expectations were set in the consortium, and many well-known research institutes had gathered there. But there was a break between researchers. The main question was how the data should be stored. Serious communication errors were added.
The disappointment at PEPP-PT was initially so great that the Fraunhofer Institute wanted to stop working on the app. The head of the initiative, Hans-Christian Boos, confirmed to the newspaper that there had been an email corresponding to the employees. However, that was off the table.
Rather, all the results of the previous work should be available: the distance measurements that the Fraunhofer Institute has carried out with the help of Bundeswehr soldiers are particularly valuable. They could be of decisive help in refining the results of the application. “In the end, governments have to choose between approaches,” says Boos. Now you have to “help politicians as much as possible.”
Regardless of the federal government’s decision, the municipalities demanded to collect much more data in the application than expected over the weekend. In a letter from the district council to Spahn, which is available at the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung,” he says that local health authorities need “the contact details of the people affected and the respective local and temporal circumstances.” This is necessary to ensure protection against infection. Federal politicians, however, rejected the request.
