Government makes Aarogya Setu open source

NEW DELHI: The

government

on Tuesday announced that the Aarogya Setu App will be open source, giving access to the

source code

to the

developers

’ community, and top officials said the move signals the government’s commitment to the core design principles of transparency, privacy andsecurity. “Open sourcing Aarogya Setu is a unique feat for India. No other government product anywhere in the world has been open-sourced at this scale,” said Niti Aayog CEO

Amitabh Kant

. “Today, its scale and size is 115 million.

Fastest App to reach 15 million in 13 days, 100 million in 41 days,” Kant said, addressing a news conference. The government also said that it seeks the developers community to help identify any vulnerabilities or code improvement in order to make Aarogya Setu more robust and secure. Towards this aim, the government launched a ‘Bug Bounty’ programme with a goal to partner with security researchers and Indian developers’ community to test the security effectiveness of Aarogya Setu and also to improve security.

A government statement said the source code of the Android version is available on Github, the global platform for software development, and the application is open for review and collaboration.