CORONAVIRUS — CONTACT
TRACING SYSTEM AUDIT
481. Hon WILSON TUCKER to the Leader of the House
representing the Premier:
I refer to the Auditor General's
report titled COVID-19 contact tracing system — Application audit
that found a number of significant weaknesses in information security controls
for WA Health's public health COVID unified system—PHOCUS. The
report concludes —
In the absence of State privacy
legislation, and consistent with the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988, people have a right to expect that WA Health will
protect the privacy of their information. In so protecting, WA Health
will build trust and confidence in government and uphold the universal human
right to information privacy.
Does the Premier support this
conclusion?
Hon SUE
ELLERY replied:
I thank the honourable member for
some notice of the question.
Yes. I note WA Health's
response to the report, which states —
The
Department and HSS accepts all recommendations and note the report highlights
many historic items that have largely
been previously addressed or were issues where existing controls were
strengthened. No breach of privacy
has occurred in relation to the system, continuous data cleansing and quality
checking is undertaken, no
inaccuracies in case status impacting management were found and no
inappropriate use of the system was recorded. This demonstrates the robustness
of PHOCUS and that the data is well managed and secure.