De Blasio created a contact tracing advisory board then largely ignored its advice
By AMANDA EISENBERG
07/17/2020 08:45 PM EDT
NEW YORK — Mayor Bill de Blasio, faced in May with the task of monitoring the spread of coronavirus among a population of more than 8 million people, wanted community buy-in for his city’s mammoth contact tracing program to work. So he created an advisory board and stacked it with community leaders and public health experts.
Two months later, members say the city has ignored the committee’s recommendations on an issue central to the program’s success: protecting privacy.
The group pushed the city to ditch Salesforce, a third-party software program, and create an internal database to shore up privacy concerns that have hampered the effort. That push along with other recommendations have fallen on deaf ears, according to 10 advisory board members who spoke to POLITICO.
https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2020/07/17/de-blasio-created-a-contact-tracing-advisory-board-then-largely-ignored-its-advice-1301922
