The users we need to prioritize, from a design perspective, in contact tracing #CovTech are 1. contact tracers, and 2. people who are being contacted.
What do contact tracing teams need to be able to do their work most effectively?
Interface design, new app development, location data gathering and analysis, any and all tech interventions into contact tracing, can all be evaluated and prioritized through the lens: is this something that contact tracers need?
Are people with contact tracing experience on the design team? How does this fit into contact tracing workflows?
And for tech that interfaces with people who are being contacted: how is this tool, & the process around it, going to support them to get access to the resources they need to be able to follow best practices?
If these questions aren't at the center, and you don't have contact tracers on your design team, it's solutionist snake oil.
If you'd like to work on contact tracing, @PIH is hiring contact tracers in Massachusetts. A LOT of contact tracers. Apply here: talentboost.cloud/partners-in-he…
In fact, if you work in tech and you are considering working on something that is related to contact tracing, I highly recommend that at least one team member sign up to work as a contact tracer, care resource coordinator, and/or case investigator. Link: talentboost.cloud/partners-in-he…
This article is required reading. The title is "How Korea Does Contact Tracing: It’s not an app." medium.com/@indica/how-ko…
S. Korea is succeeding not because they use all the available data to trace (although they do, it's not app based, & with tight legal control) but ...
because after MERS they spent more than a decade preparing, coordinating, and investing in every large scale system that is needed to effectively fight a pandemic.
They passed new laws to underpin the response back in 2009; created a dedicated organization and gave it the resources it needed; had the tests they needed within a week; had the trust of the population; ...
deployed dedicated immediate response task force teams everywhere there was a case; gathered the data they needed from all companies but only use it at the request of the Epidemic Control Officer following patient interview ...
contact trace extremely fast through a mix of dedicated people and top-down centralized data analysis drawing from many private sector data sets; invest heavily in education of the population; ...
quarantine people at home whenever possible and give them everything they need to be successful, including a package of food, biohazard trash bags, free streaming entertainment, money, and mental health care; ...
have enough PPE for absolutely everyone who needs it; and generally did everything they needed to do to be prepared. The USA (and most places) are not in that situation at all.
this adds up to a strong strike against silver bulletism, and powerful ammunition for the argument that we need deep long term structural shifts in funding priorities and trusted institutions and a government that actually cares about its people...
so we need stronger social movements and we need to win elections.
we need free, massively available testing, and enough PPE, and an army of human contact tracers, and enough resources for people to be able to self-quarantine, and universal health care, and a rent/mortgage freeze, and UBI.
In the US we don't have the political will we need to make it so that working people are able to effectively self-quarantine when they ARE notified they've been exposed.
Especially since the most-at-risk are racialized, minoritized, structurally disadvantaged, don't control the levers of power, are excluded, incarcerated, regularly sacrificed anyway on the altar of growth and the illusion of security under racial capitalism.
So for contact tracing and self-quarantine to work we need large social, cultural, political shifts that won't be possible in the time frame we need. So, maybe for the next pandemic...
What we CAN do is fight against the worst tech solutionist outcomes, like handing contact tracing contracts over to Palantir and Clearview. Also, keep shifting the conversation back to the larger changes we need to be prepared in the future...
and keep shifting discussion of contact tracing apps back to user centered design, where the user is 1. contact tracing teams and 2. those who are being contacted...
and organize towards electoral victories that can get us the deep transformation we need. Not at all satisfying in the immediate moment, but I think it's where we are. [/end]
