Singapore’s Government Technology Agency (GovTech) is contributing the source codes of the protocol that powers the TraceTogether contact-tracing app to the open source community to help stem the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.
Launched on 20 March 2020, TraceTogether works by exchanging short-distance Bluetooth signals between phones to detect other participating users in close proximity using the BlueTrace protocol developed by GovTech.
The development team behind the protocol said in its manifesto that mobile apps and wearable devices that deploy the BlueTrace protocol will be able to blend decentralised and centralised models of contact tracing.
Users have to give explicit consent to participate in TraceTogether, and for their mobile number and TraceTogether data to be used for contact tracing. This consent is provided during the initial setup of the app. When requested by contact tracers from Singapore’s Ministry of Health (MOH), users can send encrypted logs comprising cryptographically generated temporary IDs to facilitate the contact tracing process.
He noted that GovTech is now working around the clock to finalise the BlueTrace protocol’s reference documents and reference implementation, so that others may deploy their own flavours of TraceTogether.
See Singapore government to open source contact-tracing protocol
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Singapore’s Government Technology Agency is contributing the source codes of the BlueTrace protocol that powers its contact-tracing app.