IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021 - 68

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cancelled. The Minister of Health, Bent Høie, clarified
that 40 million Norwegian kroner of the taxpayer
money and months of work had to be scrapped and
that a new app would only be ready by Christmas.
The preferred solution for the new app is Google
and Apple Exposure Notification (GAEN), with data
stored mostly locally. Possibly due to the public
brouhaha, the tender process only received one
offer-which was accepted-from the Danish NetCompany,
the developer of the Danish COVID-19
tracing app also called " Smittestopp. " After a public
vote hosted by NIPH, the second installment of the
Norwegian app-experiment was also labeled Smittestopp.
While the development of this app has been
much more transparent and participatory than the
original Smittestopp app, and no data protection
issues are foreseen, at the time of writing in January
2021, the government is struggling to get the population
to download the app. While some blame is put
on the Smittestopp 1.0 fiasco, this appears not to be
related to the bad things the app did, but to its failure
to do much at all. Accordingly, issues of harm and
effectiveness are not what is at stake here.
What is the problem? Production
of knowledge, technological
experimentation, and emergencies
Together, Smittestopp and all the other initiatives
inhabiting the global ecosystem of COVID-19 tracing
apps appear to represent a chaotic matrix of transnational
elite-networking and national digital experiments
[34]. With the benefit of some hindsight, more
discussion is now needed as to how we may characterize
these initiatives. To that end, an important
aspect of the legacy of Smittestopp is the fluid nature
of what exactly was and is the problem with the app.
During the short and unhappy life of Smittestopp,
" the problem " shifted from the challenge of fighting
COVID-19 to the spectacle of a dysfunctional app
engineered and promoted by the government. In
the aftermath of the app's cancellation, I suggest that
the problem can be construed as being of a different
and more " world-making " order.
The first issue relates to how we think about,
evaluate, and make risk assessments with regard
to the experimental nature of the COVID-19 tracing
app ecosystem and the type of knowledge production
and governance practices these apps represent.
What is digital experimentation-and what is
permissible digital experimentation during a public
68
health emergency? Together with colleagues, I have
elsewhere argued that in the context of humanitarian
emergencies, experimentation can be described
as a defined, structured process to test and validate
the effect and effectiveness of new products
or approaches. While using well-known and tested
approaches-technological, medical, nutritional
or logistical, for example-in an uncertain environment
does not make that practice experimental,
though it may introduce risk through the variability
of the context of its application. However, the use
of untested approaches in chaotic and unstable
emergency situations provokes a need for more
structured processes [35]. Medical experimentation
is heavily regulated in the Global North. However,
digital experimentation is not. Instead, digital experimentation
is construed in terms of research and
development and responsible innovation, with a
focus on clearing legal hurdles. Based on the lessons
from Smittestopp, I suggest that a shift in the framing
of digital innovation initiatives targeting the general
populace could help clarify the interests, norms, and
values at stake and the processes needed to protect
them.
As a technofix, Smittestopp merits extensive
forensic attention. Smittestopp was characterized by
strong technological utopianism-and by technological
determinism. The app was enrolled as a device
for giving the population " its freedom back " -saving
lives and saving time. The app was presented
through a message of technological progress being
the central vehicle for achieving not a " perfect " but
a virus-free society in the near future. From the large
literature on socio-technical systems, we know well
that digital technology is not neutral or apolitical.
In the Norwegian case, the COVID-19 tracing app
had two equal purposes, namely infection tracing
and research, the latter which was poorly communicated
to prospective users. The testing for the app
happened concurrently with a national rollout. The
technology was not problem-free and did not work
as intended: design problems with user-friendliness,
and technical challenges related to energy consumption
were never solved.
However, I propose that attention must be given
to an additional aspect of the Smittestopp narrative,
not related to the app itself, or the temporary decline
of COVID-19 in Norway Spring and Summer 2020.
When contestations over government digital initiatives
get heated, it is often over function and mission
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021

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