It Takes Two to Techno-Tango: An Analysis of a Close Embrace Between Google/Apple and the EU in Fighting the Pandemic Through Contact Tracing Apps

Choreographing for public value in digital health?

“…Our research complements existing insights threefold: first, it complements research on public-private partnerships and their problematic relationship with public health through historical insights (Lanzing, Lievevrouw and Siffels, 2022; Ruckenstein and Dow Shull, 2017), showcasing that the state-led actions and inactions have set up significant path-dependencies that will be challenging to break. Second, our paper contributes to research on the assetization of health data (Birch, Cochrane and Ward, 2021; Geiger and Gross, 2021; Sharon, 2020) by highlighting that governments, at least in the EU, often facilitate such data grabbing through state entrepreneurship.…”

“…We chose the EU as a geographical background and context for our research for multiple reasons. First, while public-private collaborations in digital health are becoming a norm worldwide (Sharon, 2018), the EU is seen to take a global leadership position in the protection of civil, democratic liberties and privacy in the digital realm (Lanzing et al, 2022). At the same time, with current ambitions to build a EHDS, the future choreographing of this space for public value is once again open for innovation and renewal.…”

“…Citizens trusted the EU to safeguard their privacy, ensure data protection and balance the risks of the technology against its benefits for public health. In turn, the EU trusted big tech – particularly ‘Gapple’ – as these companies had already become accustomed to treading this balance (Lanzing et al, 2022). And public value was indeed delivered: without Google and Apple's (or ‘Gapple's’) joint Application Programming Interface (API), the development and rollout of contact tracing apps would have likely been infeasible (ibid).…”

“…This problem has been exacerbated during the recent Covid-19 pandemic when governments sought help from big tech companies, such as Google and Apple (or ‘Gapple’), to implement a digital infrastructure for contact tracing apps (Milne and Costa, 2020; Peek et al, 2020). Lanzing et al (2022) have labelled the push and pull between EU policies and big tech in the area of digital health as a ‘techno-tango’. We stay with this expressive image of a dance between public and private sectors but delve more deeply into who choreographs this techno-tango, through what moves and with what degrees of freedom, and most importantly with what objectives in mind.…”

Governing digital crisis responses: platform standards and the dilemma of COVID-19 contact tracing

“…While the standardization of DCT (e.g., Marhold and Fell 2021) and especially the involvement of Google and Apple naturally attracted the attention of researchers from various disciplines (e.g., Michael and Abbas 2020;Sharon 2020;Storeng and de Bengy 2021;Lanzing et al 2022), an extensive investigation based on both the standards and the platform literature addressing the above-mentioned questions and issues remains absent. However, we argue that because DCT apps rely on both software platforms and IT standards to enable their effective development and the exploitation of network effects, the case provides an avenue to advance the recent research stream that combines the aforementioned bodies of literature (e.g., Hein et al 2019;Tessmann and Elbert 2022).…”