Starting with SOAP: rapid deployment of contact tracing technologies in a pandemic

This repository contains a white paper designed to support discussions and evaluations of potential contact tracing technologies, taking in perspectives from several disciplines engaged with the debate. These include:

• the extent to which technologies supporting contact tracing preserve individual or community privacy;
• the extent to which they’re secure from malicious or inadvertent misuse;
• how suitable they are for operational use as part of a health authority’s response to an outbreak;
• and the extent to which assurance of that technology - validating that it is working as intended - is possible.

SOAP has been designed with support from researchers across the Australian National University, including computer scientists, cryptographers, legal scholars, epidemiologists, philosophers, data analysts, user researchers, anthropologists, engineers and social scientists. The technical, social, legal and contextual considerations it includes reflect the practicalities - and complexities - of designing and deploying technology solutions. These decisions cannot be left to one discipline, or one frame of reference. Ultimately, while the contributors to this document span a range of disciplines, we share two common goals: supporting contact tracing during a disease outbreak with responsible, safe technologies where it makes sense to deploy them; and ensuring citizens can trust that any technologies being deployed cannot and will not be used in ways that ultimately harm them.

Next steps: creating a formal evaluation method using SOAP

This document simply provides an introduction to SOAP. It’s designed to encourage existing discussions regarding contact tracing technologies to engage with a broader range of considerations, and start to explore interdependencies and inconsistencies between solutions currently being proposed. In future versions of this framework, we are exploring:

• Creating a formal evaluation method, refining criteria by which technology solutions might be considered and assigning weights to each. Where aspects of a solution are negatively weighted, mitigation actions might be proposed
• Releasing high level assessments of specific proposed contact tracing solutions already in production, employing SOAP concepts (Update: assessments completed so far are available here).
• Turning a high level SOAP overview into a visual tool using systems concepts
• Creating guidance and training to support organisations bringing together related and interdependent perspectives shaping contact tracing technologies

Contributors

• Ellen Broad, Senior Fellow, 3A Institute;
• Dr. Meru Sheel, National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Research School of Population Health, College of Health and Medicine;
• Professor Seth Lazar, School of Philosophy, Project Leader, and Atoosa Kasirzadeh, Research Fellow, Humanising Machine Intelligence;
• Dilan Thampapillai, Senior Lecturer, ANU College of Law;
• Associate Professor Jochen Trumpf, Director, Software Innovation Institute and Professor Graham Williams, Chief Scientist, Software Innovation Institute;
• Dr. Amy McLennan, Research Fellow, Kathy Reid, Researcher, Dr. Caitlin Bentley, Associate Professor Katherine Daniell, all of the 3A Institute;
• Dr. Ben Swift, Research School of Computer Science;
• Associate Professor Alwen Tiu, College of Engineering and Computer Science;
• Tom Uren, Senior Analyst, Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Getting in touch

If you are working on a similar project and would like to exchange emails, please contact the lead author: ellen.broad@anu.edu.au. You can provide feedback on the white paper by raising an issue or by email to the lead author.

Version 1.0 of this white paper was published on 21 April 2020. It will be supplemented by high level reviews of contact tracing solutions in deployment applying SOAP concept over the following week.

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia License.