Technology Can Play a Role in Managing COVID-19. But We Need to Get the Policies Right.

Amid a global crisis of unprecedented and as-yet unknown proportions, people are turning to technology like never before to stay connected, to work, learn, and access medical care. Technology has always had the potential to bring us closer together, to change how we live, and to help make us safer and healthier. Unfortunately, for millions of people in the United States, this new normal comes without reliable and affordable internet access. People around the world are also facing new privacy and surveillance risks as governments and companies seek to find ways to use data to track the spread of the virus and mitigate its harms. At the same time, the crisis is amplifying concerns about the spread of misinformation online, the stakes for which are now life or death. While technology can play an important role in managing the pandemic, we need sound policies in place to ensure equitable access to an internet and digital technologies that are accessible, secure, and privacy-protecting.

Technology is creating incredible new opportunities for response and resilience, but we must continue to reconcile old challenges of ethics, inequity, and overreach. Policymakers must take bold and immediate steps to close the digital divide, connecting all households to affordable and reliable internet that allows people to work from home, learn from home, and leverage the telehealth services that support social distancing and help manage health resources. We have long understood that a lack of access can exacerbate social disparities, and the coronavirus crisis lays bare this stark reality. Employment, education, and public health are all threatened by a digital divide that is entirely solvable as a matter of policy.

In addition, ad-driven online business models that monetize attention and engagement have created myriad problems, and the virus highlights the real-world harms that can come from the spread of misinformation and disinformation. As a result, immediate efforts are needed to rein in practices that mislead internet users and misuse their data; and internet platforms need to provide increased transparency and accountability around how their systems spread information among users.

With proper oversight and privacy protections, technology can also play a role in managing the pandemic. Containing the virus will require innovative approaches, and there may be a role for big data to play. However, we must ensure that any proposals to leverage data collected by tech companies or to assist public health authorities to track the disease include robust safeguards to limit who can access data, limit how this data is used, and include strict time limits to ensure that the new measures end when the pandemic is over. The actions we take in a time of crisis must be necessary and proportionate, and not create permanent structures for authoritarian government surveillance.

To help our community follow along, we’re launching a landing page to house all of our work related to COVID-19. We’ll keep this page up to date with the latest on our work around the digital divide and connectivity issues, data privacy, surveillance, content moderation, and more.

OTI has spent the past decade working to increase access to affordable and reliable broadband, protect individual privacy in an increasingly intrusive online ecosystem, and ensure all communities can unlock the potential of open and secure technologies. As our country and the world face the unprecedented challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of this work feels particularly acute.