The Department of Health (DoH) provides support for the health
and wellbeing of all citizens. The Department focuses on policies
and services for areas such as health, mental health, ambulance
services, and ageing.
Additionally, DoH has been the lead agency in the state’s response
and recovery efforts to COVID-19. During the pandemic,
a key challenge it encountered in slowing the spread of the virus
was accurately identifying and tracking people who have been in
contact with an infected person.
When the state came out of months of lockdown, it meant that
restaurants, bars, cafes, and shops were opened to the public
again. To limit the spread of COVID-19, the state government
decided to keep a record of who visited which venue and when,
and how to contact them.
This would enable contact tracers to quickly find out if someone
from a venue tested positive to COVID-19. It would also enable
the notification of any people who were there at the same time
they may have been exposed to the infection and should take
precautionary measures, such as limiting further contact to slow
the potential spread of the virus.
At the start of the pandemic, there was a lack of consistency as
to how businesses recorded people’s details. Some used pen
and paper while others used a QR code that people scanned
using the camera on their phone, which then directed them to
an online form to fill out or a third-party website that collected
details on the business’s behalf.
Besides the lack of consistency, there were also concerns
whether businesses could adequately store people’s personal
details, and only for the length of time required. Another concern
raised was whether venues were using their contact information
to sign them up for marketing mailing lists.
The state government decided to resolve this situation with a
universal QR code system. DoH first developed a contact tracing
system based on Salesforce to store and manage people’s contact
information, and then linked it to a specific QR code check-in
system that it created to capture people’s contact information.
While other countries used a government developed QR code
application for its contact tracing, the system used in this state
would be different. This was due to the check-in system needing
to integrate into the new contact tracing system.
To ensure that the combined solution worked adequately for the
state’s population, both the contact tracing and QR code checkin
systems would need to be thoroughly tested and quality
engineered. With rising COVID-19 cases, and an additional surge
expected with the end of the lockdowns, this had to be done
quickly and efficiently.
The Department did not have this capability in-house, so it would
need to rely on an external quality partner to do this for them.
Since development on the contact tracing and QR code checkin
systems was taking place during the lockdowns, the partner
would need to provide local and remote capability.