Why Britain is ignoring the Google-Apple protocol for its tracing app

EVER SINCE Apple and Google announced that they would tweak their smartphone operating systems to help digital contact-tracing, governments have been changing their approaches. Germany went along with the tech giants on April 26th, having initially been opposed. Singapore, which built the world’s first nationwide contact-tracing app, is rebuilding atop Google’s and Apple’s technology.

Not Britain. The app which Britain started trialling on the Isle of Wight on May 5th eschews the Apple and Google protocol in favour of a home-grown solution. While the Apple and Google system processes information about people’s contacts on their phones, the British system will store it on a central server controlled by the National Health Service (NHS).

The British approach has problems. There are doubts about whether it will work at all. The point of the Apple and Google protocol update is to allow phones to exchange Bluetooth contact signals in the background. Otherwise, on the latest versions of Android and on Apple’s iOS, the screen must always be on for Bluetooth tracking to take place, with the app in the foreground, killing battery life and making the phone unusable. The NHS says it has found a work-around for this, but it will certainly use more battery power than the tech giants’ own solution; and, given that it is doing...