Staff Reporter
Leading mobile network provider Vodacom says data collected on its platform in the central region has assisted the Free State health department execute contact tracing faster and more efficiently when dealing with cases of COVID-19.
Vodacom central region managing executive Mamello Selamolela told a virtual media round-table discussion that the company’s big data and analytics has played a major role in helping containing the spread of the coronavirus because it has been able to trace people’s movements without infringing on their privacy and sharing that with the health department.
“As Vodacom, we take privacy very seriously,” she said.
Big data is a field that analyses and systematically extracts information from large or complex data sets that cannot be dealt with by traditional data-processing software.
Selamolela said the data they have does not focus on individuals, but follows trends in people’s movements and uses that to advise on areas of potential outbreaks for the acute respiratory disease.
“The data that we have is not individualised but it is incredibly useful to help with the management of the crisis,” she explained.
“The data that we use to track movements of people is always aggregated.
“In other words, it’s not about individual subscribers, but the movement of multiple subscribers and it is always anonymised.”
Selamolela said all the data is handled in line with the Protection of Personal Information Act which prohibits the use of personal information without the owner’s consent, among other things.
“We can never use data of individual subscribers because it is both illegal and unhelpful to government because the coronavirus operates at scale and collecting information on individuals could be useless,” she said.
“What you need to do is to track large scale movements of people.
“For example, when the lockdown started, a lot of people who worked in Gauteng decided to leave Gauteng and rather spend the lockdown with their families, many of whom were in other provinces.
“We don’t analyse data of less than 50 customers.”
Turning to the church in Bloemfontein where COVID-19 in the city first broke out, Selamolela said they were able to establish where the people who attended the conference went after the event and advised the health department on the possible hot spots so they could prepare for that.
The region donated 2 442 smartphones to help frontline health workers to collect and transmit data in real time for resource-planning purposes as the government accelerated its COVID-19 testing campaign.
Selamolela said despite the challenges brought by the national lockdown, Vodacom has been able to model itself to provide a wider variety of products and services in order to accommodate more people.
“We want to make sure that no one is left behind. We are inclusive in our investments,” she said.
“We invest not only where it’s profitable, but where it is right and fair for us to invest – for example, in rural areas and in areas where people have historically not had access.
“We want to level the playing field . . . by giving everybody an opportunity to connect for an exciting future.”