Power play: Govt has done well to announce a bug bounty programme

In 2018, Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans unveiled a book called New Power. The premise was simple, it presented examples of how the world was changing and how government and people need to be open to the idea of community participation. This certainly does not mean a descent into anarchy, but leveraging tech to crowdsource a better future. The authors would be delighted to see government’s turning to hackathons to crowdsource solutions to tackle the current epidemic.

While India is not far behind, last week, the government took another step to opening itself up to criticism. Not many would regard Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant declaring that the government’s contact tracing app, Aarogya Setu, would be open source, as revolutionary-after all a lot of companies have taken this approach-but it is certainly a big step. More critical is the other announcement of offering Rs 1 lakh to whosoever finds and reports bugs in Aarogya Setu. Open source would also allow experts to suggest ways to the government to keep the app secure. It may also end up helping other countries which are planning to launch an app of their own.