Opt-In and related discussion to Choice, transparency and disclosure

So getting back to "Opt-In", increasingly it looks some jurisdictions will opt for mandatory. A Singaporean official told the WEF call that only 23% "opted In" rendering the Tracetogether useless. The claim was made that mandatory was going to be... Mandatory.

However mandatory fails for the following reasons 1) It simply is not practical to assume 100% of citizens have phones 2) Children cannot have phones 3) Some may choose to "thwart" phone tracing by foregoing their phones 4) Phones may be shared, burners or for various reasons do not represent the "positive test". All of this is to say that entry method, opt-in or mandatory may not actually matter, but instead what matters to create a trustworthy system. The hallmarks of which we ought to discuss. Thoughts?

I think the core problem is "public health" cannot be reconciled with "personal choice" without some sacrifice. Either public health is risked or personal choice must be sacrificed and "society" and the government will always side with "public health" in this tension. I think this necessitates our role to minimize the damage to "personal choice" and maximize the protections for the individual in the confines of the "public health" choices

@Dorothea Baur @Patricia Shaw the audit question you voted "no" to. Do you think that we should not ask the question? Remember, these are audit questions, the uncovering of information. Most of us agree that allowing contact tracing apps to be used for employment or entrance someplace is problematic, but I think we have to start by asking the question and uncovering the answer. Then we can opine on the "acceptable practice". Does that make sense? We are voting on audit rules/audit questions specifically. I am sorry if I have confused you in the process. This is a different process than most are currently engaged in, but when successful, these audit rules will be applicable to ALL contact tracing programs, uncovering the crucial information and allowing each jurisdiction to make the right decisions for its people or with the help of our Independent governance boards. Happy to do short call to discuss if need be

Hey Ryan please ignore my answer. I probably did not get the context correctly. I am afraid I am not yet ready to to join the debate. I will let you know as soon as I have recovered from my health issues. Sorry about the confusion.

Dorothea - the error is on my side as Shea pointed out above I need to provide better context and clarity. I am working on it as we speak. There will be a better delineation of Audit rules versus best practices debates, suggestions, and guidance. Thanks for participating and bear with me while I get this right for everyone.

@Shea Brown yes Shea, you are thinking about it the right way. We need to uncover the information so that we may make informed decisions on righteous governance. The Australian COVIDSafe app leaves participatory discrimination MUTE, which is a problem in both directions. They are opposed to it, but the PIA and the government had not yet banned is legally and have acknowledged that it will likely happen and they have no proposed remedy. In the United States, we do no allow kids to attend school without a vaccine. What is the dividing line in your mind? thanks for your thoughts.

I think there might be some cases where it would be in the best interest of everyone to have mandatory participation in contact tracing, but it will be very context-dependent and would likely require heavy investments from the government/organization to ensure privacy and social justice. I don't think we're at a place to make this call, so we should focus on issues that have very easy answers. Opt-in vs. Maditory is a hard question, but whether an organization should disclose which of these it is to the people being traced, that's an easy one. I was also confused by the wording of the polls below, so I think we need to make a clear distinction between audit questions we should ask, and what the answers to these need to be in order to "pass" the audit.

P.S., great to see @Dorothea Baur and @Patricia Shaw involved here, they'll give needed perspective on this!

You are right Shea. I am reorganizing the discussion to make everything easier, clearer and purposeful. I don't want people coming here and struggling, that will not do. It needs to be fast, clean, clear and obvious. Your thoughts and critique are invaluable - please keep them coming and know that we are trying our best to make a difference and make your efforts meaningful

A couple of points worth thought:
1. To Ryan's point, mandatory may not be very useful for many reasons (people in poor areas where smartphones are a luxury, outdated smartphone technology, etc.) but opt-in can be effective.

2. The technology needs to be super easy to use, it should have minimal barriers to adoption. It needs to be something from the user's perspective that's a one and done. I'm thinking of an older individual for example. Perhaps just recovered from COVID and wants to do their part by using the software. Though, after some time in ICU coupled with existing cognitive challenges, supplying medical information to the app can be daunting and create a barrier that would prevent adoption. Just one of many examples that would have to be explored from the UX perspective.

1. Submitting information through the app can be a barrier to adoption also. Think about the last time you were in the ER or went to a new doctor. When you fill out that questionnaire, did any of those questions make you feel uncomfortable? Did you wonder who was going to see that information? If they were just binary questions, did you answer incorrectly because you felt you needed to explain yourself?

4. I like the Apple the Google model since it tries it's best to anonymize the data and puts the burden mostly on the health monitoring agencies. The minimal requirements from the individual user perspective help increase the likelihood of adoption.

4. The average person has a very limited working knowledge of data privacy. Most work from the position of "I have nothing to hide, so I'm not worried" - a result of years of corporate propaganda in response to data privacy concerns. Introduce health information combined with an app/service that is tracking the individual for a specific reason, there's going to be a lot of emotional concern. Fears of being shamed, embarrassment, fear of knowing they've come in contact with someone exposed. This presents the biggest challenge around education, building trust, and eventually getting the individual to adopt the technology.

Overall - opting in has a lot of challenges with it, many of which will come down to not just the UI experience, but also the entire customer journey and experience. The hosting organization and app maker will play a large part in adoption and opt-in if they have established themselves as privacy advocates or a trustworthy brand.

I think I got a little off track, but yes, opt-in is the preferred choice, but if the above challenges are not considered, resulting in low adoption, I'm afraid we'll see more push for mandatory adoption.