Tracing App failures

It appears to me that everywhere around the world Governments and their pet IT consultants have made a mess of track and trace apps for phones. Ours was difficult to use and only just useful because too many people recognise a dog when they see one. Please don’t ask how much it cost. The Australian one has been downloaded by 6 million people (because it doesn’t work very well on Apple phones and doesn’t work at all on older models), has cost millions to develop and has yet to find a virus. The manual system running in parallel seems to be working. They actually knew what they were doing when they invented paper and pencils. A track and trace app is only good if it works close to 100 per cent of the time. With the testing regime making a series of missteps which are continually having to be corrected (who gets them, at what price, inaccurate tests with false positives and false negatives, forgetting to test, allowing some people to opt out and basically flip the bird at officials etc) it is a wonder that we have managed to get where we are.

My solution, which is by no means comprehensive, is for each business that opens should have an A4 sheet with their company name and address stuck to their entrance. Anybody within the team of 5 million with a phone, and hence a camera, can photograph the sign as they enter and then carry on with their day. Each photo is date and time stamped by the phone and can later be used to track the owner if necessary. There are no privacy issues unless the owner of the phone is close to a possible outbreak and then it is in their interests to forgo their privacy and provide the officials with a track of their movements. It is not foolproof but it is much cheaper than developing an app and convincing millions to download it and use it, and businesses to somehow organise a Q code which appears to be a graphic expression of gobbledygook to them.

If we can warn everybody with a phone about an impending tsunami then can surely warn everybody with a phone where there was a possible outbreak. Geoff Orchard, Ohaupo