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One of the biggest failures of COVIDSafe in Australia was that it was so heavily bashed by everyone on it's initial release. Anyone who was anyone binned it as

by tim-- 5y ago

One of the biggest failures of COVIDSafe in Australia was that it was so heavily bashed by everyone on it's initial release. Anyone who was anyone binned it as soon as it was released. With an app like COVIDSafe, where you require to have mass adoption of the app to work (there is no use having 10% of phones operating in the wild with the app installed, you require more like 80-90%, ideally every phone running the app.) Instead, every techie I spoke to either hated it wasn't open source; or used the fact that the app was based on Singapore's app, but was not subsequently open sourced itself. I feel that if the powers that be had changed the way that the source was developed, worked with the public a little closer that maybe these issues would not have existed. But sadly, the damage for COVIDSafe was already done in the first few weeks. There was no resuscitation possible. I liken it to how the AstraZeneca vaccine was dissed in the media. A small chance of clots was heralded as a major issue, which lead to a extremely slow uptake of a vaccine that is for the most part perfectly fine. Add to that the fact that privacy was never really enacted for the use of the data gathered by COVIDSafe (and other similar contact tracing tools, for example in Sydney, NSW https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/breach-of-trust-police-using-qr-check-in-data-to-solve-crimes-20210903-p58om8.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/breach-of-trust-poli... ) and you have a perfect storm of an app that no-one really keeps installed. COVIDSafe was dead on arrival.

afgdfgaefdg 5y ago
>I liken it to how the AstraZeneca vaccine was dissed in the media. u shouldnt there was a short point before delta in the uk where (healthy) young people were more at risk from clotting of AZ than contracting rona this sort of revisionism isnt healthy
alerighi 5y ago
> I liken it to how the AstraZeneca vaccine was dissed in the media. A small chance of clots was heralded as a major issue, which lead to a extremely slow uptake of a vaccine that is for the most part perfectly fine. It's less safe, there were some deaths, and also it protects less than alternatives like Pfizer and Moderna. So there is no point in that vaccine, in my country they first banned it for people under 60, and now they are no longer using it, choosing only to use Pfizer and Moderna vaccines (that uses the better mRNA technology).
- retsibsi 5y ago
  The problem is that we had put quite a few of our eggs in the AZ basket to begin with, so the loss of confidence seriously delayed our vaccine rollout. And in the end we missed out, by a couple of months, on having good vaccine coverage before the delta strain got away from us. On the other hand, I think some of the anti-anti-AZ stuff is over the top. The increased TTS risk is by now clearly real, the non-fatal outcomes are often pretty bad, and until recently the fatality rate was expected to be very high. In the pre-delta period, when our covid prevalence was extremely low and it was reasonable to hope that state would last long enough to see us through to the Pfizer rollout, waiting for Pfizer was probably a sensible decision ex ante for many people, even taking into account a reasonable level of pro-sociality (and even without knowing that there would be a significant difference in effectiveness). An official or media-led decision to play down the risk would have caused some preventable deaths (and serious harm to a larger number) among people who, from a self-interested perspective, probably shouldn't have taken that vaccine in the first place. With hindsight, those deaths are outweighed by the covid deaths we're now seeing; but that wasn't obvious pre-delta, and in any case the authorities would have burned a lot of trust and given a free kick to the 'sceptics' and conspiracy theorists if they had hidden or misleadingly played down the risk.
Smoosh 5y ago
The distrust I had was also in part because it was rushed out the door and based upon Singapores's app, which used deprecated APIs. This, while Google and Apple were promising new fit-for-purpose and interworking APIs within a few weeks. At the risk of getting political I would also say that this government has a track record of making big announcements, throwing some money to it's friends (donors, boosters) to do the work, not adequately spec'ing or managing the project, not caring if the expected outcomes are achieved and money was wasted, then blaming someone else should this become an issue in the media. This project seems to be just another example of that process.
- tim-- 5y ago
  Yeah, but the amazing thing about software is that updates can arrive. It shouldn't matter if the APIs in use are deprecated, or a new API that is designed for the use case arrives in three weeks after the application was initially released (the APIs were not ready when COVIDSafe was made available to the public). Get the app - even if it's imperfect - in the hands of users. Admit fault for the issues that do exist, and commit to a timeline to remedy the issues and update APIs.
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
I think that in the big picture, COVIDSafe failing over these issues was a good thing: Hopefully, it will encourage future governments to take a more transparent approach and respect people's privacy, because (maybe for the first time in recent history), there's a concrete, demonstrated downside to trying to do the opposite.
- toofy 5y ago
  > …there’s a concrete, demonstrated downside to trying to do the opposite. I feel this way about so much of the things that have happened with COVID. We have such an opportunity to learn so much here but looking at how we’re handling the outbreaks in real time doesn’t give me a lot of hope. At this point we know which actions or lack of actions will lead to an outbreak and those communities still do little to mitigate. Combine this with how we continually do the wrong things on so many other issues and then cry crocodile tears when we get the same results, I’m just not sure we’ll behave differently next time.
ValentineC 5y ago
> Instead, every techie I spoke to either hated it wasn't open source; or used the fact that the app was based on Singapore's app, but was not subsequently open sourced itself. Singaporean here. Our app has never really been open sourced either, contrary to claims from our previous Smart Nation Minister [1]. The only things that were open sourced were the BlueTrace protocol, which Australia uses, and some really outdated reference app implementations. I think Singapore has given up on the Bluetooth tracing approach as well, and has pivoted to requiring everyone to check in at various buildings and eating establishments [2]. Then again, Singapore, despite being one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, imposed further restrictions on eating out that take effect today. [3] Hurray. :) /s [1] https://www.smartnation.gov.sg/whats-new/speeches/clarification-on-the-usage-of-tracetogether-data-by-dr-vivian-balakrishnan https://www.smartnation.gov.sg/whats-new/speeches/clarificat... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SafeEntry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SafeEntry [3] https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/dine-in-social-group-sizes-cut-to-2-from-sept-27-with-covid-19-cases-possibly https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/dine-in-social...
ghuntley 5y ago
> But sadly, the damage for COVIDSafe was already done in the first few weeks. There was no resuscitation possible. I (the aurhor) feel similar as well. Interfacing with the media was (and continues) to be the only way problems in Australian IT projects are resolved. The Australian Government needs a Vulnerability Disclosure Policy. I would love nothing more than to be able to deal directly with engineers and have sound knowledge that critical problems will be fixed vs having to interface with the media to get problems resolved.
- tim-- 5y ago
  Australia should get something akin to the USDS (https://www.usds.gov/ https://www.usds.gov/) that acts as a third party contractor/advisor to the federal and state departments. Have a rolling panel built from Australians that work in the industry to publicly comment on tech projects run by the Government.
hexa22 5y ago
Don’t forget the detail that the app just flat out didn’t work on iOS and the governments advice was to open the app, turn off auto screen locking and leave the app running, screen on in your pocket. Shortly after, Android and iOS released a proper API for doing this which worked in the background but the government did not use it.
wabzqem 5y ago
As soon as it was released, there was actually pretty good support for it. It was shortly after - when people started realising it didn't actually work as advertised, that it lost all credibility as the government insisted that it did. But you're right, from there it didn't recover. Most of the bugs affecting how it worked (especially on iPhone) , security and privacy were found by the community, including critical bugs that stopped the app working entirely that weren't fixed until August. All while the government kept saying there was nothing wrong with it. So it's hard to argue that the bashing wasn't warranted. The app really did not work. I really want our government to do technology better. Vaccine passports are already off to a poor start - but I really hope that the community has enough influence that we can start to make a difference.

by tim-- 5y ago

afgdfgaefdg 5y ago

>I liken it to how the AstraZeneca vaccine was dissed in the media. u shouldnt there was a short point before delta in the uk where (healthy) young people were more at risk from clotting of AZ than contracting rona this sort of revisionism isnt healthy

alerighi 5y ago

> I liken it to how the AstraZeneca vaccine was dissed in the media. A small chance of clots was heralded as a major issue, which lead to a extremely slow uptake of a vaccine that is for the most part perfectly fine. It's less safe, there were some deaths, and also it protects less than alternatives like Pfizer and Moderna. So there is no point in that vaccine, in my country they first banned it for people under 60, and now they are no longer using it, choosing only to use Pfizer and Moderna vaccines (that uses the better mRNA technology).

retsibsi 5y ago
The problem is that we had put quite a few of our eggs in the AZ basket to begin with, so the loss of confidence seriously delayed our vaccine rollout. And in the end we missed out, by a couple of months, on having good vaccine coverage before the delta strain got away from us. On the other hand, I think some of the anti-anti-AZ stuff is over the top. The increased TTS risk is by now clearly real, the non-fatal outcomes are often pretty bad, and until recently the fatality rate was expected to be very high. In the pre-delta period, when our covid prevalence was extremely low and it was reasonable to hope that state would last long enough to see us through to the Pfizer rollout, waiting for Pfizer was probably a sensible decision ex ante for many people, even taking into account a reasonable level of pro-sociality (and even without knowing that there would be a significant difference in effectiveness). An official or media-led decision to play down the risk would have caused some preventable deaths (and serious harm to a larger number) among people who, from a self-interested perspective, probably shouldn't have taken that vaccine in the first place. With hindsight, those deaths are outweighed by the covid deaths we're now seeing; but that wasn't obvious pre-delta, and in any case the authorities would have burned a lot of trust and given a free kick to the 'sceptics' and conspiracy theorists if they had hidden or misleadingly played down the risk.

Smoosh 5y ago

The distrust I had was also in part because it was rushed out the door and based upon Singapores's app, which used deprecated APIs. This, while Google and Apple were promising new fit-for-purpose and interworking APIs within a few weeks. At the risk of getting political I would also say that this government has a track record of making big announcements, throwing some money to it's friends (donors, boosters) to do the work, not adequately spec'ing or managing the project, not caring if the expected outcomes are achieved and money was wasted, then blaming someone else should this become an issue in the media. This project seems to be just another example of that process.

tim-- 5y ago
Yeah, but the amazing thing about software is that updates can arrive. It shouldn't matter if the APIs in use are deprecated, or a new API that is designed for the use case arrives in three weeks after the application was initially released (the APIs were not ready when COVIDSafe was made available to the public). Get the app - even if it's imperfect - in the hands of users. Admit fault for the issues that do exist, and commit to a timeline to remedy the issues and update APIs.

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago

I think that in the big picture, COVIDSafe failing over these issues was a good thing: Hopefully, it will encourage future governments to take a more transparent approach and respect people's privacy, because (maybe for the first time in recent history), there's a concrete, demonstrated downside to trying to do the opposite.

toofy 5y ago
> …there’s a concrete, demonstrated downside to trying to do the opposite. I feel this way about so much of the things that have happened with COVID. We have such an opportunity to learn so much here but looking at how we’re handling the outbreaks in real time doesn’t give me a lot of hope. At this point we know which actions or lack of actions will lead to an outbreak and those communities still do little to mitigate. Combine this with how we continually do the wrong things on so many other issues and then cry crocodile tears when we get the same results, I’m just not sure we’ll behave differently next time.

ValentineC 5y ago

> Instead, every techie I spoke to either hated it wasn't open source; or used the fact that the app was based on Singapore's app, but was not subsequently open sourced itself. Singaporean here. Our app has never really been open sourced either, contrary to claims from our previous Smart Nation Minister [1]. The only things that were open sourced were the BlueTrace protocol, which Australia uses, and some really outdated reference app implementations. I think Singapore has given up on the Bluetooth tracing approach as well, and has pivoted to requiring everyone to check in at various buildings and eating establishments [2]. Then again, Singapore, despite being one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, imposed further restrictions on eating out that take effect today. [3] Hurray. :) /s [1] https://www.smartnation.gov.sg/whats-new/speeches/clarification-on-the-usage-of-tracetogether-data-by-dr-vivian-balakrishnan https://www.smartnation.gov.sg/whats-new/speeches/clarificat... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SafeEntry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SafeEntry [3] https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/dine-in-social-group-sizes-cut-to-2-from-sept-27-with-covid-19-cases-possibly https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/dine-in-social...

ghuntley 5y ago

> But sadly, the damage for COVIDSafe was already done in the first few weeks. There was no resuscitation possible. I (the aurhor) feel similar as well. Interfacing with the media was (and continues) to be the only way problems in Australian IT projects are resolved. The Australian Government needs a Vulnerability Disclosure Policy. I would love nothing more than to be able to deal directly with engineers and have sound knowledge that critical problems will be fixed vs having to interface with the media to get problems resolved.

tim-- 5y ago
Australia should get something akin to the USDS (https://www.usds.gov/ https://www.usds.gov/) that acts as a third party contractor/advisor to the federal and state departments. Have a rolling panel built from Australians that work in the industry to publicly comment on tech projects run by the Government.

hexa22 5y ago

Don’t forget the detail that the app just flat out didn’t work on iOS and the governments advice was to open the app, turn off auto screen locking and leave the app running, screen on in your pocket. Shortly after, Android and iOS released a proper API for doing this which worked in the background but the government did not use it.

wabzqem 5y ago

As soon as it was released, there was actually pretty good support for it. It was shortly after - when people started realising it didn't actually work as advertised, that it lost all credibility as the government insisted that it did. But you're right, from there it didn't recover. Most of the bugs affecting how it worked (especially on iPhone) , security and privacy were found by the community, including critical bugs that stopped the app working entirely that weren't fixed until August. All while the government kept saying there was nothing wrong with it. So it's hard to argue that the bashing wasn't warranted. The app really did not work. I really want our government to do technology better. Vaccine passports are already off to a poor start - but I really hope that the community has enough influence that we can start to make a difference.