These two articles appeared last week:
First we had:
The COVIDSafe app is just another expensive fail
by Sonia Hickey | Jun 1, 2021 | Digital, Featured, Ladder |
This week, Victoria’s health minister openly mocked the COVIDSafe app. With the program still costing $100,000 a month, the joke is on us.
There has been a litany of problems with the Government’s app, leading many to question whether the millions of taxpayer dollars spent has been worth it.
There were initial concerns about the collection and use of data and privacy, and given the great failure that was the 2016 online Census and the widescale privacy breaches associated with My Health Record, these concerns certainly continue.
Then there were the hoax messages that the Australian Federal Police were called to investigate after many users reported receiving a text when they were further than 20 kilometres from home.
Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that an early version of the app accidentally informed several users that they had ‘tested positive for Covid-19’, causing members of the public to attend testing clinics in an anxious and distressed state, only to find out the app’s information was totally incorrect.
Other documents show that the government was aware in early May 2020 of a range of issues with the Bluetooth beacons, which are used in the app to record close contacts.
These beacons were also interfering with other applications, including glucose monitors for people with diabetes.
The Federal Government maintained that the app has been widely successful, and around 7 million people have downloaded it, meeting the original target of 40% of the population.
Yet as researchers from the University of Melbourne have pointed out, “…by May last year, only 44% of those surveyed had actually downloaded it. Plenty on social media are now saying they’ve all but abandoned COVIDSafe in favour of the QR code check-ins done via, for example, the Victorian government app or the Service NSW app. And when Victoria’s health minister Martin Foley was asked this week whether the COVIDSafe app had been used in responding to the latest outbreak, he said: ‘No. Not to my knowledge, and I’m sure in such a rare event it would have been brought to my attention’.”
Last month, former Labor leader Bill Shorten totted up the cost to the taxpayer, estimating that the program has cost $7,753,863, suggesting that the program will continue to cost $100,000 a month to maintain.
More here:
https://www.thebigsmoke.com.au/2021/06/01/the-covidsafe-app-just-another-expensive-fail/
Then we had this:
COVIDSafe hasn’t found any contacts this year
Denham Sadler
Senior Reporter
2 June 2021
The federal government’s COVIDSafe contact tracing app has not found any new contacts this year and has still identified just 17 people in total, with the agency behind it being forced to issue a correction over incorrect figures provided to a Senate Estimates hearing last week.
At the hearing, Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) chief executive Randall Brugeaud told senators the COVIDSafe had been used to identify 567 close contacts of confirmed Covid-19 cases.
This was a sharp jump on the 17 contacts previously reported, and confused some of the Labor Senators.
It was later confirmed that this figure included the 544 contacts identified by manual contact tracers in NSW after COVIDSafe helped to identify a new exposure time at a pub in the state.
After discussions with the NSW government, a new definition was used to determine the cases picked up by COVIDSafe and these were included in the total number.
This still left six new cases identified by COVIDSafe that hadn’t been reported, according to the DTA figures.
But the DTA has now admitted that this number is wrong, and the total number of close contacts identified by COVIDSafe, including the 544 identified by manual tracers in NSW, is actually 561.
This means that no new cases have been picked up by COVIDSafe at all this year, despite significant outbreaks in NSW and Victoria.
The DTA confirmed it has issued a correction to the Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee about this figure.
More here:
https://www.innovationaus.com/covidsafe-hasnt-found-any-contacts-this-year/
Looks to me that the time has come to turn the COVIDSafe costs into actual flesh and blood contact tracers etc.
David.
4 comments:
And they want to do COVID passports - this really is getting a bit OTT.
Of interest, does anyone use the app? I have a state based one and had completely forgotten about the Fibs one
Can’t say I have ever used it (the Fed one). I looked it up on the App Store, not seemingly attracting much attention. I never reloaded they also have a second app just for information purposes, sure that does not create confusion.
David you say - Looks to me that the time has come to turn the COVIDSafe costs into actual flesh and blood contact tracers etc.
With you 100%
Just think how useful myhr or escripts are to these poor people.
Major flooding in Victoria leaves tens of thousands without power or telecommunications
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jun/12/major-flooding-in-victoria-with-traralgon-ordered-to-evacuate-as-creek-level-rises
Jun 2021 15.52 AEST
Tens of thousands of Victorian residents remained without power or telecommunications as heavy rainfall and flooding continued to impact large parts of the state.
Communities without phone coverage and unable to call triple-zero included: Trentham, King Lake, Dandenong Ranges, South Gippsland, Gembrook, Pyalong, Don Valley, Healesville, Lancefield and Woori Yallock.
More than 56,000 electricity customers were off supply, according to AusNet.
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