ICTworks

Back in April 2020, Apple and Google announced COVID-19 contact tracing technology for iPhone and Android mobile phones. At our Global Digital Health Forum session on digital COVAX certificates, not a single person was using either company’s apps. What happened? What led to their failure?

How did the richest technology companies fail in COVID-19 digital response?

After our GDHF2020 session ended, I kept wondering how Apple and Google could fail at what was a pretty easy problem: developing a contact tracing application for COVID-19 infections. Robust digital contact tracing applications are in use for many other infections diseases, and these are two of the most powerful corporations on Earth – almost independent nation-states.

Failure Wasn’t Due to Lack of Resources

First, we cannot overestimate the resources amassed by these technology companies. They have an embarrassment of riches, especially when compared with international development organizations.

Apple is the most valuable public company in the world. Google is richer than many countries. Here is a visual representation of the annual revenues or budgets for Apple, Google, USAID, the World Bank, and The Bill and Melina Gates Foundation. Each bubble is relative in size.

Apple’s $274 Billion in FY2020 revenue is 16 times larger than USAID’s FY2019 $17 Billion budget. In fact, Apple’s free cash flow – cash profit it can use as needed – was $75 Billion. In essence, Apple could fund the entire USAID budget every year with what amounts to pocket change for the company. The Gates Foundation is a rounding error by comparison.

Failure Wasn’t Due to Technology Design

Developing a technology solution contact tracing is a relatively simple problem. We’ve know the science behind contact tracing for decades. Both the epidemiological process and the computer technology that can understand mobile phone proximity and alert those phones that were near another device.

In fact, Facebook already tracks your location and shares that data with advertisers, even if you opt out. (One of many reasons why I left the Facebook) Facebook is an application from a third-party developer too. Not Apple or Google, who have access to the core firmware and software of every phone.

Hence, it was pretty easy for Apple and Google to build the core exposure notification system software. That wasn’t where they failed. Actually, their solution was pretty elegant. It used Bluetooth technology for devices to ping their immediate geographic area and record the phones nearby in unique number sets stored locally on the phone.

If a phone owner subsequently tested positive, that phone would upload its recent activities to a server that could notify the phones that were in proximity. Neither Apple nor Google would have any personal or location data, which is better than Facebook’s app.

Three Reasons Why Apple and Google Failed

If the exposure notification technology solution was viable, where did Apple and Google fail with what is a relatively easy technology problem? You’d think that with all their money, power, and smarts we would all be using their contact tracing app.

1. Launching in an Emergency

The first rule with any technology deployment is to not deploy anything new in an emergency. Always build on existing systems that already have wide adoption and trust within your target constituency.

Here, Apple and Google did build on their existing smartphone ecosystem with iOS and Android. However, they required state-level public health agencies to develop the alert system – just as those same agencies were battling a massive pandemic after years of disinvestment in public health resources. Public health agencies were too overwhelmed to pivot towards smartphone application development.

In addition, neither Apple nor Google had a high degree of trust with consumers or government agencies. Apple has a slightly better reputation for privacy than other technology companies, but that’s not saying much. Google on the other hand, has privacy violation as a core business strategy. It’s whole goal is to find out everything about you for the benefit of advertisers, its true customers. Few had trust that these two companies would be honorable with even more personal data.

2. Putting Technology First

Apple and Google are technology companies, so obviously, they put technology first. They talked about the contact tracing functionality. They were proud of their specifications for Bluetooth, cryptography, and framework API. Yet, in all the documentation I could find, they only spent one paragraph (just three sentences) on the need for contact tracing:

Yes, public health agencies have the primary responsibility for educating the public on contact tracing benefits, which means it was even easier for Apple and Google to reinforce their message. Focus on the benefits, sell the emotion, and drive adoption with all the skills they use to entice us to buy iPhones and use GMail. Yet they did none of that. They launched the tech and sang praises for Rolling Proximity Identifier Keys and ENIntervalNumbers.

3. Assuming Government Adoption

Finally, both companies did what so many of us do in ICT4D. Apple and Google assumed that if they built a world-class contact tracing technology, governments and their citizens would immediately adopt their solution. The same assumption that is central to so many failures in international development.

Many governments opted to build their own contact tracing software, with mixed results. Singapore, Ireland, and Germany were very successful. The UK’s effort was an object lesson in mismanagement. Others took their time investigating the Apple/Google solution. Switzerland became the first country to adopt the exposure notification system in May.

Now that many communities in the USA have given up on contact tracing – there are just too many exposure opportunities – California is launching CA Notify on the Apple/Google exposure notification system. 18 states and Washington, DC, now have a COVID-19 exposure notification application based on the Apple/Google system.

Yet how many people have actually used any of the systems? Governments may adopt the system, but that doesn’t mean their citizens will use it. Ireland has one of the highest voluntary adoption rates at 37%, which still may not be enough for success. Qatar and China have better adoption – as exposure notification apps there are mandatory.

Tech Companies Often Fail – As Do We

For 8 years, I organized Fail Festivals around the world to celebrate failure as normal and expected when we push the boundaries of what is possible in scaling ideas from pilots to global programs. Technology company failures were a highlight of every event.

For example, did you know YouTube started as a video dating site? Or that Pets.com thought that people would buy dog food over the Internet? Or that Rovio created 51 game failures before they launched Angry Birds?

They joined international development organizations in being honest with what goes wrong in pushing the boundaries of what is possible in scaling ideas from pilots to global programs. Hence, my critique of Apple and Google is not done with malice. Instead we should review and learn from failure, less we grow arrogant and then repeat it.

Google Failed in Ebola Response Too

Speaking of tech companies repeating failure, in his GDHF2020 Lightning Talk, Clayton Sims pointed out how Google failed in the Ebola response.

He shows that when COVID-19 hit, it lay bare an underlying truth: tools originally developed and funded by the ICT4D industry were all suddenly, unexpectedly, and critically unique and important. Not just in LMICs, but everywhere.  While tools developed by big technology companies did not – and can not – respond to global health challenges.