Tech expert frustrated by Government's lack of 'engagement' with private sector around Covid-19 tracing app

May 8, 2020

Fran Strajnar explains how he "accidentally" came up with a solution to track people amid the pandemic, without invading privacy.

An Auckland technology entrepreneur is calling for ways to track where people have been in a private and secure way as New Zealand eyes lessoning lockdown restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Yesterday, the Government outlined what life would look like at Alert Level 2 . Under Level 2 bubbles will effectively come to an end with more interaction with others allowed. Domestic travel will be allowed, businesses and schools will open. Gatherings of people will have to be kept to under 100 people.

A decision on alert levels will be made by the Government on Monday, May 11.

The Government is looking at ways to continue to track people, though, to trace potential cases of the Covid-19 virus, but some tech experts are frustrated and concerned with how they've gone about it.

Fran Strajnar told TVNZ1's Breakfast this morning he and his own company, Techemy Ltd, "accidentally" built a simple and practical app which he believes is the perfect solution and one Kiwis will use.

Overseas, in places like Singapore, uptake of using tracing apps have been ignored by some as there were "deep rooted privacy concerns".

The Prime Minister gave an update today, ahead of the Government's announcement next week.

But Mr Strajnar said his app, which was built mainly for hospitality and hotel industries, stores data on a decentralised network rather than being susceptible to data breaches on someone's phone or in the cloud.

"Think of it as you leave your apartment or your house and your TV, your cat, fridge, everything inside it turns into sand the minute that you leave the door and it gets sprinkled across the bench. It's impossible to recompile that date."

However, Mr Strajnar said the Government's plans for a tracing app has been "quite a closed process".

"Perhaps the Government is overwhelmed with the solutions and urgency to get something in place, but it's been a rather closed process and there hasn't been much private sector engagement even with very large tech companies, IT contractors and what not," he said.

"We firmly believe that technology can have a solution that gets the Government the information they need while being self-sovereign and not destroying users privacy. Technology can absolutely streamline this process."

It's hoped the technology will be in operation by mid-May but there is still some work to be done.

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