Finland open sources the code of its app to track Covid-19

As we mentioned in our blog, the code of the Spanish application to track Covid-19 positive contacts in RADAR COVID was released last week.

Its Finnish counterpart became Open Source a few weeks earlier, at the end of August. This app for tracking and monitoring Covid-19 cases is called Koronavilkku and has been published under the European Union Public Licence (EUPL-1.2), which allows its reuse.

The Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) leads this development, with the collaboration of several specialized software companies in the country. THL's Director of Information Services, Aleksi Yrttiaho, explained in an official statement that the publication of the code of this application "will allow the independent evaluation of the system’s functionality and security and the utilisation of the source code. Once the software code is shared for everyone, possible software errors can be found and corrected quickly."

Users and developers are invited to download the code and submit reports and comments on Koronavilkku. The security of the application and all processes derived from it are already being assessed by the National Cyber Security Centre Finland.

This app allows citizens to take an active part in preventing the spread of the virus. It helps to identify those who have been exposed to the virus and to stop faster infection chains.

The source code is available on GitHub.