The Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) and software company Solita have published (25 August 2020) the source code of the Koronavilkku application, the official Covid-19 tracing app of Finland. This will allow the independent evaluation of the system’s functionality and security and the utilisation of the source code.
The source code has been published in GitHub, the world’s largest online service offering open source software.
“Open source is a modern way to develop and distribute software. Once the software code is shared for everyone, possible software errors can be found and corrected quickly,” says Aleksi Yrttiaho, Director of Information Services at THL.
Solita encourages the developer community to provide feedback on Koronavilkku.
“Despite the rushed schedule, we wanted to involve the developer community in evaluating the application. We will welcome feedback and suggestions for modifications, the most important of which we will make an effort to assess without delay,” says Solita’s Senior Consultant Sami Köykkä.
The National Cyber Security Centre Finland will also assess the security of the Koronavilkku application, its background system and their related processes. The Centre’s evaluation will be completed later this week.
Koronavilkku available in app stores next week
The app will allow people to participate in preventing the spread of the virus and to protect their own and their loved ones’ health. Through the app, people exposed to the virus can be reached and infection chains can be stopped faster.
The Finnish and Swedish versions of the Koronavilkku app will be published on Tuesday, 1 September, at which time the public will be able to download the app to their phones free of charge from the largest app stores.
An English version of the app will be published later in the autumn.
Koronavilkku in Github
Source code:
License: EUPL-1.2 (European Union Public Licence)
Inquiries
Read more about the Koronavilkku app on the THL website: Contact tracing app to help stop chains of infection
- Aleksi Yrttiaho, Director of Information Services, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, Tel. + 358 29 524 7671, [email protected]
- Sami Köykkä, Senior Consultant, Solita, Tel. +358 40 553 6962, [email protected]
Solita
