Government opens up source code of Aarogya Setu app

The government on Tuesday said, as the key pillars of Aarogya Setu have been transparency, privacy and security, and in line with India's policy on open source software, the source code of Aarogya Sety has now been made open source.

The government has made the code of Aarogya Setu Covid app open source, in a bid to allay fears around privacy of citizens. Making the code open source means that anyone like a developer can inspect the source code and flag off any potential security risks.

Earlier, the access of developers to the source code was limited as it was not open leading to concerns around privacy and accountability of the government. As the app was developed as a public-private partnership, it was demanded that the source code should be open source allowing everyone to inspect it and flag off any possible issues.

The government on Tuesday said, as the key pillars of Aarogya Setu have been transparency, privacy and security, and in line with India’s policy on open source software, the source code of Aarogya Sety has now been made open source. The source code for the Android version is already available for review and collaboration while that of iOS will be done within the next two weeks. Almost 98% of Aarogya Setu users are on Android platform.

“Opening the source code to the developer community signifies our continuing commitment to the principles of transparency and collaboration,” the government said.

The app was released on April 2 with an objective of enabling bluetooth based contact tracing, mapping of likely hotspots and dissemination of relevant information about Covid-19.