Canadian Tech Companies Recreate ArriveCan App In Two Days
On October 7, 2022, the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) revealed a breakdown of the costs to build and maintain the ArriveCan app. The app was a mandatory tool for Canadian travelers to upload their health information in relation to Covid-19 measures.
What is GCstrategies?
The breakdown revealed that 23 separate companies received contracts involving the use of the app. Most notably, GCstrategies, an Ottawa-based IT services and consulting company with five employees, received $9 million from the federal government.
GCstrategies employed several subcontractors, but the names cannot be revealed by the federal government for confidentiality reasons. Meanwhile, data that these subcontractors had access to involves the personal information of millions of Canadian citizens.
The nature of the contracts with the companies involves a variety of work including the ArriveCan app and other efforts.
Listed Company Never Worked on the App
Reported Thursday by The Globe and Mail, the CEO of ThinkOn, Craig McLellan stated that they have received no money from the CBSA.
“We’re not even remotely in that space,” McLellan told The Globe and Mail.
The CBSA said that ThinkOn received contract work valued at $1.2 million related to the ArriveCan app.
The Power of the Canadian Tech Industry
Sheetal Jaitly, CEO of TribalScale created a hackathon on October 10 and after two days of work, his team recreated the ArriveCan app.
"Our team wanted to use this as an opportunity for change. The goal of this was to show how smart and talented the Canadian tech community is”, Jaitly stated in a press release.
A preview of the app that TribalScale created can be viewed here.
Zain Manji, co-founder of Lazer Technologies posted on Twitter that a single employee at his company replicated the app in two days as well.
Manji specified that “$54M is a bit too much.”
Learning From Past Mistakes
In a blog post on his company’s website, Manji has empathy for the federal government. “Creating an app that is meant to improve the Canadian border experience for the entire country has many challenges associated with it.”
Both Jaitly and Manji are advocating that in the future, governments at all levels can consider more diverse technical partners in Canada.
TribalScale is also forming The Canadian Technology Consortium, which will be a “free advisory resource for the Canadian government at all levels across the country on any digital questions now or in the future”, Jaitly continued.
