The SAIP app is in its final days. According to our sources, as also reported by our colleagues at RTL On Tuesday, the government decided to discontinue the Public Alert and Information System, better known as the “alerte attentat” app.
The mobile app will therefore be deactivated from this Friday, 1 June. Launched on 8 June 2016 to coincide with the start of the UEFA European Football Championship in France, the SAIP system was designed to send out alerts and behavioural advice in the form of mobile notifications to the public in the event of a major emergency (such as a terrorist attack or a nuclear accident).
€400,000 for a fiasco
According to a report in *Le Monde*, a series of failures during the attacks in France has cast doubt on the effectiveness of a system that is said to have cost the state nearly 400,000 euros. During the attack on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice on 14 July 2016, it took the app two hours to send the alert to smartphones. On 23 March this year, no alert was sent during the hostage-taking at a Super U supermarket in Trèbes, as reported by our colleagues at RTL. The authorities had been considering using geolocated text alerts and mobile network broadcasting to strengthen the system. These solutions have been ruled out for the time being.
Two years on, the initiative has been deemed a failure. The app has not fulfilled its purpose. A Senate report had already highlighted its shortcomings and limited impact back in August 2017. It is too complex and does not cover a sufficiently large section of the population. Using SAIP requires a smartphone running on Android or iOS only, with access to mobile data, and the app must run in the background to function.