An important question mark associated with apps linked to the national Corona virus is whether they will work when citizens of one country travel to another.Or if people are asked to download and use multiple apps while traveling across borders?
Using multiple apps while traveling will further complicate a disproportionate technology that seeks to recreate the standard components of a smartphone to estimate viral exposure.Something our mobile devices never intended.Because this region is across the border. However, in normal times, EU citizens may forget that they are in the Schengen area thanks to an agreement to facilitate the free movement of EU people.Currently, there is still a degree of lockdown with many EU countries, so there is relatively little travel across the border.
But the European Commission is focusing on supporting the tourism sector during the Corona virus crisis. A tourism and transport package is being proposed this week with recommendations for lifting sanctions gradually and in stages.
Once Europeans start traveling again, the effectiveness of any national contact identification apps can be reduced if systems capable of communicating with each other are unable to communicate with each other.
In the European Union, this could mean, for example, a French citizen going on a business trip to Germany. Where he spends time with someone who later experiences positive for COVID
It cannot be warned of the danger of exposure. Or really, the opposite
In the United States, which remains a member of the European Union until the end of this year (during the Brexit transition period), the situation is even more troubling – with Ireland choosing a decentralized app architecture for its national app. Because of the decision
In Northern Ireland, which is part of the United States, the national application is likely to be a centralized system developed by the NHSX of the United States. And the CEO of NHSX acknowledges that this technical division presents a particular challenge to the NHS COVID-19 app.
There are many broader questions about how useful digital tracking will be in the fight against the corona virus. But it is clear that if such applications do not easily penetrate into multinational regions such as Europe, additional, unsupported data gaps will be created.
Any irregularity of cross-border interference will harm functionality – unless people stop traveling outside their countries.
EU interoperability as agreed goal
EU member states recognize this, and a set of interoperability guidelines for national apps has been agreed this week. “Users should be able to freely rely on any app from the region or member state they are in at a particular moment,” he wrote.
The full technical details of the interoperability are not yet known – “make sure to run the interoperability as soon as possible,” as they presented it.
But the intention is to work together so that different apps can at least share data so that Europeans can roam the region once (or once) the restrictions are lifted.
“Whatever approach is taken with approved apps, all member states and commissions consider the interdependence between these tools and between backend systems,” he wrote.
This is especially important for cross-border workers and neighboring countries. ”
After all, this effort will help to gradually lift border controls within the EU and restore the independence movement. These tools should be integrated with other members, considering each member state’s COVID-19 connectivity strategy.
European consumers can expect mutual intervention. But is cross-border work an important question mark in practice? Acquiring a number of different health systems and apps to calculate risk exposure in slightly different ways to securely share relevant bits of data can be a huge operational and technical challenge in itself.
However, this causes a headache due to the ongoing differences between the countries over the basic choice of app architecture for their national corona virus contact.
It boils down to the choice of either a decentralized or centralized approach – storing and processing data locally on smartphones via a ventilated protocol (ie, from a matching device); And central protocols that upload exposure data and perform simulations on a central server controlled by a national authority, such as the Health Service.
Although there seems to be clear pathways to interoperability between different decentralized protocols – here, for example, is a different discussion document in which people behind different decentralized protocols write about how close tracing systems are in the region. Can interfere with each other. Really anti-polar point of view, at least it seems difficult and dirty.
This is a big problem if we want digital communication to be easily accessible across borders.
(Furthermore, some may say that if Europe cannot agree on a common path to the region that affects all citizens of the region, it does not reflect the broader “European plan”) Many countries are involved. But
Health members have state qualifications, meaning the commission has limited powers in the area
In the Health Network’s “Interoperability Guidelines” document, member states agree that interaction should be maintained regardless of which app architecture a European country has chosen.
A section of cross-border transmission chains forward has yet to see any way to do this yet [urge us] – that is, the need for “reliable and secure” procedures. Out of the ordinary talk about:
Solutions should allow member countries’ servers to communicate and receive relevant keys between each other using reliable and secure mechanisms.
Roaming users should upload information about their nearest collision to their beloved homeland. The other member state (state) should be informed about potentially affected or exposed users *.
* For roaming users, the question of which server should be sent the details of the relevant close contacts during technical communication. Interoperability questions will also be explored on how the user’s app should behave after confirming the potential need to verify that COVID-19 is positive and infection-free.
In contrast, 19-year-old scholars, who are behind the suggestion of mutual intervention of protocols identifying different decentralized interactions, are included at the end of the document in the section that is being discussed that, theoretically, thus The system can be adapted to “alternatives”: aka the central system.
But with privacy warnings, it’s thick.