At the beginning of the year it was still considered a bringer of salvation, today it is through in many places again. In the case of high incidences, the Luca app was intended to relieve health authorities and make lockdowns avoidable. Six months later, the results are sobering. From the mirrors Health authorities questioned stated that the app had helped to break contact chains in a total of 60 cases. Instead, there are new messages every few days about problems with the software connection, data protection or security gaps.
To believe that health authorities working with faxes and index cards would develop into digital model students in the midst of a pandemic was quite naive. The result: 13 federal states spent over 20 million euros on the app promise of salvation. However, the software is only used effectively in very few health authorities. The experiences are quite different from state to state. In Berlin, the authorities are annoyed because they have to manually transfer contact details that arrive with Luca to the Sormas health department software. This would also work automatically, but the Berlin data protectionists say no. In Bavaria, on the other hand, the data protection officers are less strict and the health authorities are more satisfied. However, the app is used rather neglected.
Because even without a strict data protection officer, Luca causes a lot of effort. According to its own statements, the app sent around 15,000 warning notices to users’ cell phones nationwide in the past 14 days; two weeks earlier it was therefore more than twice as many. But no matter how many Luca warnings, in the rarest of cases these warnings were followed by measures by the authorities. It often turns out that the Luca data is unusable because operators equip areas that are too large with just one check-in, so infection is unlikely. Or the users were not checked out again after visiting a restaurant due to a technical problem. In case of doubt, an office is more likely not to order a quarantine, after all, the respective government pays for possible loss of earnings.
Many countries insist on the contact details – against their better judgment
Even if Luca got the numerous data protection and security problems under control, the conclusion would remain that the countries are spending millions on an app that is hardly used in the health authorities. This is all the more annoying when you consider that the Corona Warning App (CWA), which is also financed with government millions, offers almost the same functions. With the CWA, users can also check into restaurants and cultural venues and are warned later if other visitors test positive. The only difference: The CWA saves itself having to go through the health authorities and warns other users anonymously and directly. This is faster and more data-efficient, but unfortunately does not comply with the corona protection regulations of most countries. So far, they have insisted on the contact details – against their better judgment.
But corona protection regulations can be changed. How, North Rhine-Westphalia recently demonstrated. The country, which is one of only three federal states that did not rely centrally on Luca, deleted the contact survey in the catering trade from the Corona Protection Ordinance. Restaurant operators who still want to offer check-ins must do so with the anonymous Corona warning app because there is no longer a legal basis for recording contact data. Instead, the 3G rule now applies in NRW from an incidence of 35: Those who have not been vaccinated or recovered need a negative test in order to go out to eat, for example – regardless of contact details. Unlike the Luca app, this is guaranteed to make work easier for the health authorities.
It is slowly dawning on some other federal states that the part that Luca is able to do to contain a pandemic is vanishingly small. Model districts in Thuringia and North Rhine-Westphalia that Luca could use free of charge are discontinuing use. Also in Berlin, according to reports, a majority of the parliamentary groups in the House of Representatives do not want to extend the contract with the app makers in the new year. The other federal states should also ask themselves whether the millions that flow into the account of the app developer would not be better invested elsewhere in the future.