The federal government is responsible for its COVIDsafe app own goals

The government should have taken time to work through the COVIDsafe app’s technical glitches ahead of encouraging us to download it.

The Australian Government's voluntary coronavirus tracing app 'COVIDSafe' is seen on a mobile phone in Melbourne, Sunday, April 26, 2020. (AAP Image/Scott Barbour)

A couple of years ago, a Halaxy employee was exposed to measles after visiting his wife’s work.

As it turned out, he’d also never been vaccinated — against anything, including measles. As you can imagine, this came as quite a shock, and forced me to think quickly about how to manage the situation.

To compound the problem, another employee had recently told me — in secret — that she was just shy of 12-weeks pregnant. All of a sudden, I was faced with navigating the nuances of personal privacy, trust and workplace safety. Knowing I couldn't allow a pregnant employee to enter the building without warning her about the threat of measles first, I stood outside and waited for her in the foyer.

Thankfully, she was vaccinated and healthy. However, a few other employees suffered from auto-immune conditions, as did the partners of a couple of others’. All up, 20 per cent of the Halaxy workforce was potentially at risk of suffering from very real health-related complications due to this one random instance of measles contact.

Looking back, I can’t help but wish we’d had the option of a contact tracking app to make things easier — and safer — for us all.

Which brings me to our current conundrum: to download or not to download the COVIDSafe app? As far as the Prime Minister is concerned, the quicker we all download the app, the quicker we’re going to be able to go to the pub.

While I wholeheartedly agree with the introduction of the app, the narrative as to why it’s important for Australians to download it is a little simplistic — and not particularly inclusive.

And while Australians are downloading the app, it’s by no means the entire population: a large proportion of us remain sceptical of the technology, whether it’s to do with privacy concerns (warranted or not) or simply due to genuine philosophical objections regarding personal data collection.

Many of those people will eventually come around, but there will always remain a segment of society that will abstain — or, at the very least, take significant effort to convince.

To do this, the narrative around the benefits of the technology needs to change. By urging us to download the app so that we can get to the pub, the government has chosen to draw on the appeal of ocker-male logic and engage in a rhetoric of self-interest, rather than thoroughly explain the vital link between individual health and collective, national health.

This is also why there is such a construct as a “health system” – i.e. part of our taxes are used to pay for other people’s healthcare even if they are sicker than we are – because their health is in my interest and my health is in their interest.

Having worked in healthcare for close to two decades, I’ve had the privilege of observing the sector from above. Through our health booking platform Halaxy, I see how interconnected healthcare is, and how beneficial it is when healthcare is treated holistically, like puzzle pieces that fit into a broader narrative.

This is the essence of healthcare, and while people many not read this detail explicitly, everyone knows it when you say it.

How most Australians have responded to COVID-19 – accepting social distancing, 5 million people downloading the app in just over a week – is a perfect example of people accepting that their healthcare (and dare I say it, their freedom) is dependent in the long run on other people’s healthcare and freedom.

When it comes to privacy and tech concerns, it doesn’t help that every very few days, another bit of information is leaked that the app won’t work unless we leave the Bluetooth on, or that it will work differently from Apple users as opposed to Android. This confusion could have been avoided had the government taken time to work through the technical glitches ahead of encouraging us to download the app.

To add to the confusion, the data collected so far cannot be used until there is legislation in place to protect it, which came out after millions had downloaded the app. It appears there is a lack of forward thinking when it comes to communicating with Australians: we are being told information only when it is relevant rather than as part of a cohesive, overall strategy to ease us back into normal living.

We’d do well to take some tips from Ireland on this: instead of doling out information on a case-by-case basis, the Irish government took the time to publish a road map for reopening society and business, clearly outlining the five stages for unlocking restrictions, at three week intervals.

As a result, the Irish citizens have a clear pathway forward they can refer to, and have, to some degree, a sense of certainty.

In order for the technology to be widely accepted, we need to relate it to the conversation that my health matters to your health, and vice versa. By clearly articulating that individual health is not an isolated issue, and that it is, in fact, socially and economically beneficial for every person to be part of the COVIDSafe neighbourhood, we stand to convert even the most hard line cynics towards the greater good. And it is the greater good of achieving flattening the curve together through social distancing that has led to us achieving this goal so quickly.

And, as my measles situation taught me, having an app to do the tracking for you – instead of having to potentially reveal people’s secrets publicly in order to make sure everyone’s health is protected — is actually more protective of personal privacy in real life.

Alison Hardacre is the CEO of Halaxy