Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how work on the NHS covid-19 contact tracing app was divided between (a) NHSX and (b) VMWare Pivotal Labs; and what criteria for success were defined in the contract for that project.

The National Health Service COVID-19 app is being developed by a multidisciplinary, multi-organisational team led by NHSX but also including representatives from across Government. VMWare, formerly Pivotal, was contracted by NHSX to provide a minimum viable product, to test and learn, and then to continue to productise the app. The contract asked it to:

- Work to an agile methodology to create a proximity tracing solution;

- Design, build and implement a scalable and robust platform to support the app for the duration of the contract;

- Provide live service support for the app and platform for national launch; and

- Share knowledge with NHSX and complete a service transition of the app and platform over to NHSX or NHSX’s chosen partner.