The federal government’s external spending on the COVIDSafe app has surpassed the $5 million mark, nearly six months after its launch.
In April, the government launched an app to monitor and limit the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. The app uses bluetooth technology to log contacts between users who were within 1.5 meters of each other, and if the user tests positive for the coronavirus, the app sends an alert message to state or territory health authorities.
The first version of COVIDSafe, developed by the Digital Transformation Agency in collaboration with several external consultancies and IT firms, was widely criticized by many and several improvements have since been introduced through repeated updates.
With this, the total bill for external consulting, development and maintenance of the contact tracing application COVIDSafe has now broken the $5 million mark. American strategy consulting giant Boston Consulting Group was the main beneficiary of the project, receiving more than $1 million to work on the proposal, design and functionality and technology improvements.
Built on Amazon Web Services cloud technology, several AWS integrators were involved in building, hosting and maintaining the application. The most notable players are Shine Solutions, which has worked with the Digital Transformation Agency since the early stages (nearly $1.5 million in fees so far), and AWS consultancy Cevo, which recently won a $1 million contract for six months of support.
Other private sector firms that have played a role in the app’s development process include IT consultancy Canberra CTO Group, Canberra cyber security company Ionize and technology services company Delv.
Total external spend on the app is estimated to be in the millions, with more than $5 million for the consultancy and IT bill, but other costs spent on activities such as internal project management, advertising and alignment with the health sector have not been quantified by the Digital Transformation Agency.
The spending frenzy has come under the spotlight of late as critics believe the app is not delivering the returns promised when the project was launched. Although more than 6 million people have downloaded the much-hyped app, only a small number of confirmed Covid-19 cases have passed through the app so far, with manual contact tracing still responsible for the majority of people diagnosed with the virus.
In addition to the impact on people and healthcare, containing the pandemic is of critical economic importance to Australia. A July report by Deloitte found that if Australia’s second wave of infections got out of hand, it would be a devastating $100 billion hit to the economy.