Government makes Aarogya Setu open source; launches bug bounty programme

NEW DELHI: The government has released the source code of its Covid-19 contact tracing app, Aarogya Setu, on software development platform GitHub, in line with India’s policy on Open Source Software.

The government hopes to leverage the expertise of top technical brains in the country to improve the platform by releasing the source code, which has been a key demand of privacy experts. The platform has been aiding frontline workers in the fight against the pandemic.

Principal Scientific Adviser Prof. K VijayRaghavan said that contact tracing historically has been done manually during times of contagion, but this usually takes weeks. “…This allows us to effectively battle the disease,” he said.