IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021 - 66

Feature
The Norwegian
COVID-19 Tracing App
Experiment: Lessons for
Governance and Civic
Activism
Kristin Bergtora Sandvik
University of Oslo, 0130 Oslo, Norway
and Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO),
0134 Oslo, Norway
 The rollouT of a host of COVID-19 tracing apps
has been described as a global digital experiment.
This development has been followed by a proliferation
of scholarship, analyzing and assessing the performance
of these apps in fighting the pandemic [1],
[2]. This includes discussions of their legal [3], [4],
ethical [5]-[7], and technical properties [8], as well
as more detailed investigations of the surveillance
implications and the effectiveness of national initiatives
[9], [10]. In this commentary, I am interested in
what this experiment tells us about the digital transformation
of health governance-and perhaps, also
of governance, in general-at the national level.
Emergencies are powerful vectors for both remaking
and reimagining the world. As noted by Craig Calhoun,
as cultural constructs, the notions of " humanitarian "
and " emergency " and a focus on " urgency " shape
understandings of what happens in the world, who is
supposed to act, and what is supposed to be done [11].
Veena Das offers the term " critical events " to describe
events that are transformative in the making of society,
bringing about " new modes of action " and new
categories of understanding [12]. Wrestling with the
world-making abilities of COVID-19, public intellectuals
and thinkers have tried to make sense of the pandemic
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2021.3101824
Date of current version: 2 September 2021.
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0278-0097/21©2021 IEEE
by explaining it as a gateway and moment for change:
Arundhati Roy has suggested that " The pandemic is a
portal between one world and the next " [13]. Others
have grappled with the kind of change COVID-19 represents
and how to label it. Anthony Giddens explains
that the COVID-19 pandemic is not just a re-run of previous
epidemics but a form of " digidemic, " where the
digital transformation is radically transforming global
health, politics, culture, and work-life [14]. Inspired by
these contributions, my point of departure is that the
COVID-19 tracing apps and the experimental practices
they espouse are about much more than health data
and elicit important questions about legitimacy, power,
participation, and social change.
Taking the first lifecycle of the Norwegian tracing
app " Smittestopp " ( " End infection " in Norwegian) as
a case study, the commentary is intended as a contribution
to the growing body of critical analysis of
COVID-19 tracing apps and to scholarship on public
interest technology [15]. On April 16, 2020, the Norwegian
COVID-19 tracing app Smittestopp was launched
to great fanfare. The app was presented as crucial to
the effort of saving lives and curbing infection rates. A
few months later, on September 28, it was finally over.
December 21, Smittestopp 1.0 was replaced by a new
and much less controversial app with the same name
[16]. The lifecycle of this second Smittestopp app falls
outside the scope of this commentary [17].
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021

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