CPaaS : A Helping Hand to COVID Warriors

CPaaS (Communication Platform as a Service) is a very powerful tool which is often considered to be useful only for business related applications. However, this is ONLY partially true. CPaaS has more facets of deployment and one such applications can be for social causes and governance purposes.

One such use case was deployed for a State Government in India.

Let’s rewind to almost a year ago when the lockdown had happened across the country. People were stranded everywhere and could not get back to their homes as state borders were closed. After a few months, these borders started opening-up and people started returning to their homes across the country. However, things were not so simple for both the traveling citizens and the state authorities as the chances of spread of COVID when moving between various states and the fear of the virus was still high. To keep track of the people entering a state, the State Government introduced entry passes which had to be shown at the check posts and entry points to the state.

Once the people had entered into the state and were asked to stay in quarantine, the next question was “How do we keep a check on them? How do we monitor if they had any symptoms or difficulties or questions regarding COVID?”.

It was at this point where volunteers from NGOs across the state joined hands with the government. The government authorities gave them the responsibility of calling up those in quarantine, checking on their well being and supporting them psychologically and emotionally. But how would the privacy and security of both the volunteers and those in quarantine be ensured? Also how would the authorities monitor the process efficiently and reduce manual intervention?

It is at this point that CPaaS can lend its helping hand. Each volunteer was auto-allocated a fixed number of people to be called. The volunteers would call the CPaaS platform, on a common number, from where the call would be initiated to those in quarantine. The volunteers would not know the actual telephone number of those in quarantine and vice versa. Post call, the volunteers can update the feedback and details collected on a web application for the authorities to take the necessary actions. This ensures the privacy and security of both the parties on call and also makes monitoring more efficient with lesser manual work. Thus CPaaS enables smoother working of the society, ensures better governance practices and is not restricted to just businesses applications alone.