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The Health Ministry has delayed the planned test of the CovidCard contact tracing system in Rotorua, but Trade Me founder Sam Morgan has questioned whether it is capable of testing.
The ministry had planned to carry out a test of the Bluetooth-based devices last month, but a spokeswoman said a week-long test would begin later this month.
The prototype cards did not have adequate “privacy and security” controls, and more development work and “provisioning options” were being considered to solve that, he said.
Morgan, who has partially funded the development of CovidCard, said private sector volunteers who developed the contact tracing system did not participate in the potential trial.
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They had lost confidence that the ministry had a genuine intention to implement CovidCards, he said.
“There is no technical capacity in the Ministry of Health to execute a project of this type or even more tests, so we have all taken a step back.
“Of course, we would expect various reasons to be given as to why it is never delivered, hence our desire to step away a bit before the project fails in the hands of those now tasked.”
Richard Heathcote / Getty Images
The Kiwi company that designed the CovidCard helped develop the award-winning Bump device that was used to maintain social distancing during last weekend’s London Marathon.
CovidCards are designed to automatically record people’s close contacts in a secure way so that contact trackers can use the information if someone is diagnosed with the virus.
Dean Armstrong, CEO of Hamilton wireless technology company Virscient, which carried out the technical work to produce the cards, confirmed that the original private sector team working on the CovidCard had “disbanded and went back to business. newspapers ”.
“The technology has been independently developed by Virscient over the past few months and is currently deployed in full-featured commercial environments,” he said.
NOON / RNZ REPORT
Tech company owner Ian Taylor says Covid card delays are frustrating.
Armstrong said that Virscient had designed the “Bump” contact tracking tokens for the British company Tharsus that were used to prevent close contact between participants in last weekend’s London Marathon.
The BBC reported that all 500 marathon event coordinators and 100 elite athletes used the devices, which sounded an alarm if users got too close to each other, ahead of the 19-lap race around London’s St James’s Park.
The devices received a “pandemic award” from Britain’s Royal Academy of Engineering, which said they had been assembled by “a multidisciplinary working group assembled by Tharsus, which includes companies from across the UK, Switzerland, Greece and New Zealand. “.
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CovidCards are designed to automatically record people’s close contacts in a secure way, so that contact trackers can use the information if someone is diagnosed with the virus.
The Defense Technology Agency said in a report in July that it was impressed with the quality of effort put into developing the CovidCard “and in particular the attention paid to security and privacy considerations.”
The Health Ministry has not elaborated on its concerns.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has indicated that it plans to test CovidCards separately in a managed isolation facility.
A spokeswoman said she was conducting a series of activities and consultations to prepare for that, and was working with research organizations to consider the design of the trial.
The Government confirmed late last month that the Government’s Minister of Digital Services, Kris Faafoi, was responsible for the CovidCard project.
A Faafoi spokesman said last month that “ultimately the responsibility will rest with the Cabinet, while the presentation of recommendations is likely to be a joint ministerial process.”
