Using a core idea of critical social theory, alienation, this talk presents the case of failure in the design and adoption of a Stop-COVID app in France. The political and scientific discourse were analyzed to develop an understanding of the conditions giving rise to this failure in this unprecedented moment. It is argued that the digital-first solutionist approach taken by the government failed because, as in all Western countries, most stakeholders were alienated from the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic and lacked concrete knowledge of it. Furthermore, the French government and its COVID-19 council excluded relevant scientific experts in favour of quantitative modelling based on abstract partial knowledge. This along with coercion and lack of transparency about the app, reinforced alienation, undermined effectiveness in managing the crisis and resulted in the digital design failure. It is suggested that such alienation will prevail in the COVID-19 era characterised by regimes of control, rampant abusive location tracking, and data collection, and where public officials are more concerned with managing effects than seeking causal explanations. The digital first solutionist approach was adopted, not because digital solutions (to contact tracing) are superior to traditional ones, but by default due to alienation and lack of interdisciplinary cooperation.
Professor Frantz Rowe has been serving as a Professor of Information Systems at the University of Nantes, France, since the fall of 1995. Before he was a Professor at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications, Paris, and an Assistant Professor at Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, Paris. His major research areas pertain to individual and organizational transformations related to information systems projects and use. He has directed several research projects on ERP dynamics, on the design and performance of call centers (including shared or virtual) and on electronic marketplaces. He has published articles in scientific journals including MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Journal, Journal of Information Technology, Database, Accounting Management and IT, Journal of Global Information Management, Journal of Decision Systems, Transportation Research, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. He has also written several books. He co-founded the Association Information and Management in 1991 and served as Vice President for Research till 1998. He is a fellow of the Association for Information Systems (AIS).