Australia’s expensive CovidSafe app finally gets decommissioned

An expensive and heavily scrutinised phone app is on its way out after setting taxpayers back millions of dollars in the last two years.

The CovidSafe phone application that never quite worked but cost taxpayers millions of dollars has finally been axed.

News that it had been decommissioned spread this week after the Australian Department of Health asked users to uninstall the app.

“CovidSafe is being decommissioned. Please uninstall the app. The CovidSafe was developed to assist contact tracing and stop the spread of Covid-19. The CovidSafe app is no longer being used to assist health officials with contact tracing," a notice in the Apple App Store read.

The app, which was heavily scrutinised after its April 2020 launch, cost taxpayers $4 million to develop and a total of $16 million.

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The CovidSafe app has finally been axed. Picture: Saeed KHAN/AFP

A measly 17 unique contacts were identified by the app in 2020, with it not used at all by state governments during the 2021 Delta outbreak.

The Department of Health last year agreed the app was “rarely” used, with a Labor-led senate committee ahead of the election in May calling on funding to be ceased.

The committee cited the app’s many limitations and significant cost.

Health Minister Mark Butler was the driving force behind the app’s decommissioning, last month signing a document slating it as “no longer required to prevent or control the entry, emergence, establishment or spread” of Covid-19, The Canberra Times reported.

He described the app “useless” in December and called on then prime minister Scott Morrison to take responsibility for its ineffectiveness and “stop wasting taxpayers’ money”.

An update will remove collected data.

Users have been asked to uninstall the app.

Excitement fast turned to disappointment following the app’s launch, but Mr Morrison infamously remarked it was “like wearing sunscreen outside”.

Users complained they experienced persistent phone issues, including their battery draining particularly fast while the app was running in the background.

The government’s Digital Transformation Agency refused to release figures that would expose how many people continued to use the expensive app, reportedly costing $75,000 a month, despite a year-long Freedom of Information battle from The Guardian.

Electronic Frontiers Australia’s chair, Justin Warren, told the publication the DTA appeared to “be trying to argue that we can’t learn the truth about just how big a lemon the CovidSafe app is because then people might know it’s a lemon and act accordingly”.

“It’s clear to me that they wouldn’t try to make this argument if the app was useful,” he said.

Users were offered an update on Tuesday that “removes functionality of the app so no information is stored or collected”.

Hype surrounding the app’s launch in April 2020 was short-lived. Picture: Mark Kolbe/Getty Images

“This will enable [the] decommission process of CovidSafe,” it said.

Mr Butler told The Guardian “this failed app was a colossal waste of more than $21m of taxpayers money”.

“It is clear this app failed as a public health measure and that’s why we’ve acted to delete it,” he said.

Collection of data from the app will end on August 16 which is when it will no longer be downloadable.

All remaining data would then be required to be deleted “as soon as reasonably practicable”, ensuring no data was retained.

Originally published as Australia’s expensive CovidSafe app finally gets decommissioned