IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021 - 67

From a scholarly perspective, this perhaps surprising
fiasco-Norway is a wealthy, consensus-oriented,
and highly digitized democracy-is analytically useful.
The postmortem dissection of the app and the
reasons for its failure have been remarkably virulent
for the Norwegian context. The passion with which
activists, technologists, bureaucrats, and scholars
fought against the app and the contestations over its
legacy suggest that for the rule of law and democratic
accountability, struggles over personal data and privacy
will continue to get fiercer. Hence, the failure
of the Norwegian experiment raises important questions
for the future of pandemic government as well
as the digital transformation of health governance-
and the role of democratic participation therein.
Tracing the rise and fall of Smittestopp, the commentary
problematizes Smittestopp as a form of
digital experimentation and reflects on what the
Smittestopp saga tells us about the opportunities
and challenges facing civil society and academia
with respect to holding governments accountable
for digital experimentation. The commentary draws
on my previous work on humanitarian technology
and experimentation [18]-[23]; media reports and
online debates about the Smittestopp app as well as
experiential insights gained through my participation
in the Norwegian public debate during 2020.1 In particular,
I have greatly benefitted from being included
as a member in a slack channel called " Smittestoppwatch, "
which served as a mobilizing vehicle and
communication channel for the Norwegian tech
community. The commentary develops insights
offered in my previously published papers and blog
posts on Smittestopp [24]-[26]. All translations from
Norwegian are my own. The commentary proceeds in
three parts, starting with a background context before
moving on to discuss problem definition and knowledge
production around digital experimentation, and
the struggle to hold governments accountable for this
type of " emergency " digital initiatives.
Smittestopp: A brief saga
By the end of 2020, it was clear that Norway had
done exceptionally well in terms of pandemic governance.
Although few people were dead, there had
been no prolonged national lockdown; the digital
transformation of Norwegian society had made a
giant leap, and though weakened, the oil-fueled
1 I Have Hosted Eight National Academic Webinars on Aspects of the Domestic
Covid-19 Response and the Rule of Law.
economy was not in crisis. However, from a lessons-learnt
perspective, it is useful to focus on failures
of digital governance as well as what we can learn
from popular resistance to digital experimentation.
In April 2020, the introduction of the Norwegian
COVID-19 tracing app Smittestopp was surrounded by
enormous technological optimism. The Ministry of
Health, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH),
the developer of Smittestopp, Simula-a government-founded
research laboratory (and thus a public
entity)-and the prime minister, Erna Solberg, underscored
the civic duty to download the app [27] to make
sure that it had enough users to make a difference. Norway's
total population is 5.3 million. At the time of the
launch, " enough people " was thought to be 50%-60%
of the population over the age of 16. At its peak, the app
had almost 900,000 active users [28]. By early June, it
had been downloaded 1.6 million times [29].
Starting weeks before the actual launch of the
app in mid-April, the Norwegian Data Protection
Authorities (DPA), part of the media, some politicians,
and a large part of the domestic tech community
had grown exasperated with the procurement
processes, functionalities, and designated application
of Smittestopp. From the launch date, the app
was hampered by technical problems and subjected
to a deluge of criticism from rapidly self-organizing
members of the Norwegian tech and data protection
community for being experimental, intrusive, nontransparent,
relying on unfounded techno-optimism
and abusing trust. As succinctly phrased by a tech
activist, the grievance was that NIPH/Simula did not
listen to experts and " made a surveillance app with
infection tracing, not an infection tracing app " [30].
By June 12, DPA issued a formal warning to the
NIPH that they were considering a temporary ban
on the app due to the app being disproportionately
intrusive with respect to personal data. By June 15,
the NIPH stopped collecting data, declaring that this
meant a weakening of the national preparedness
against increased infection rates as we are " loosing
time to develop and test the app, " and at the
same time losing our capability to fight the spread
of COVID-19 [31]. By June 16, Amnesty published
a report declaring that " Bahrain, Kuwait, and Norway
have run roughshod over people's privacy,
with highly invasive surveillance tools which go far
beyond what is justified in efforts to tackle COVID-19 "
[32]. On July 6, the DPA issued a temporary ban on
the app [33]. On September 28, Smittestopp was
September 2021
67
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021

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