The U.K. government's COVID-19 contact-tracing apps were a successful endeavor in ensuring citizens' privacy during a crisis, Information Commissioner’s Office Director of Regulatory Assurance Ian Hulme wrote in a blog post. Apps used across the U.K. are set to be decommissioned 27 April, and he said the ICO's work with the Department of Health and Social Care at the onset of the pandemic made it possible "to ensure that data protection law wasn’t a barrier to … innovation," while building "privacy considerations … into the lifecycle of the app — from design to decommission."