Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 21 April 2021
2048. Deputy Pa Daly asked the Minister for Health the person or body that retains the legal rights to transcripts, standard operating procedures and any other intellectual property developed in the course of the Covid-19 tracker application or app programme. [19685/21]
View answerI am advised that the Health Service Executive (HSE) holds the copyright to the software. The code and supporting documentation was 'open sourced' so that other publicly funded healthcare organisations could benefit from the work done in Ireland. Based on this decision other public health authorities such as the health service in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Gibraltar, Jersey, New Zealand and the US states of New Your, New Jersey and others, were able to tailor this code to provide a covid tracker app for their populations. The release of the source code and associated development material under an Open Source licence enabled use without restriction. Open sourcing the code also helped build trust with people here in Ireland as it provided transparency about what the app was doing and how it was managing data, thus encouraging high take up rates. The COVID Tracker App is a valuable digital tool that can be utilised by the public in Ireland to help in the fight against the spread of COVID-19.
The licence information is publicly available and can be found at the following links, together with the associated documentation and the source code:
https://github.com/hseireland
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
