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RECEIVED
2 7 MAY 1il2il
Parliamentary Section
OFFICIAL
Australian Government
Meeting Brief
Department of Health
MBl0-001621 Version (i)
Date sent to MO: 20/05/20
To:
Minister Hunt
Subject:
Minister Hunt ......... .
Date: L f I> 12CPet?J
Comments:
Contact
Danie/Keys
First Assistant Secretory, Information
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Officer:
Technology Division
Clearance Charles Wann
Deputy Secretary
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Officer:
ACT 1982 (CTH)
Date/ Time: 10.30am, Thursday 21 May 2020
Location:
Traditional Custodians:
HEALTH
Purpose: To discuss Apple's health roadmap In
Australia
Kev Attendees/Saeakers: I Title:
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Organisation: INFORMATION
Mobile No:
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Key Matters:
The Department has worked with Apple Inc. to release a number of mobile apps through
their iTunes platform, including the Coronavirus app which had over 3.6 million downloads
and COVIDSafe which has over 5.8 million downloads.
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THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN RELEASED UNDER
To maximise uptake, the Department
THE
requested Apple feature the COVIDSafe app in their
app store to increase visibility however this request was not initially actioned by Apple.
BY THE DEPARTMENT OF
Health and the DTA are working in partnership with Apple to understand and embed the
native contact tracing functionality under development by Apple into the COVIDSafe app.
Apple and the DTA have been oollaborating well with acknowledgement that Australia is
leading the world in the practical use of technology for contact tracing.
Apple's Exposure Notification Framework
The proposed Exposure Notification Framework (ENF) under development by Apple will
enforce a distributed data model to maintain privacy. The voluntary nature of this approach
will limit its applicability in the Australian context given the role of the states and territories
and Public Health Officials.
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The Unite!f Kingdom have raised concerns regarding the applicability of the distributed
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design with Apple and have stated that the framework is of limited use in its current form.
Our initial assessment has revealed that adopting the ENF within the COVIDSafe app will
require significant redesign of the approach to contact tracing. Issues including:
• The framework does not support a centralised repository of identified users that
can be managed by a central authority. It relies on individuals managing their own
close contacts and initiating an interaction with government.
• The COVIDSafe App would need to be completely redesigned and rebuilt. The ENF
cannot simply be embedded into the current COVIDSafe app as it has currently been
developed due to the lack of access to low level Application Programming Interface
(API) in the framework.
• Push notifications are the primary mechanism to notify close contacts. Notifying
close contacts through an a pp-based notification may cause alarm if not managed
properly.
• Public Health Officials would not have centralised visibility over the contacts under
UNDER
(CTH)
the ENF and would instead rely on individuals initiating a close contact
based on a
push notification received from another user.
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•
A new
Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA} would need to be conducted and legislative
amendments may be required if the framework was to be adopted.
ACT
• ENF supports less backwards device compatibility compared to our current-system
which needs 10S version 10 or above. It is only compatible with I Phone 6 or later
RELEASED
that are running iOS version 13.S or above (only around
15% of current users are on
0S13.5).
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For the ENF to be beneficial to Australia, the framework should be modified to allow access
to the underlying API's that allow countries to utilise native functions of the operating
HAS
OF
system to improve app performance within their existing business processes.
INFORMATION
OF
The ENF will be available towards the end of May but will be of limited use in its current
form. A comprehensive assessment Is currently being developed by the DTA to inform
decision making.
DOCUMENT
The major benefit of ENF is the promis�d Bluetooth connectivity improvements which may
DEPARTMENT
Improve the accuracy of the current app's approach to
FREEDOM Bluetooth connectivity. While Apple
have represented significant improvements
THIS
to Bluetooth operation, we have been unable
to validate Improvement claims. The ability to
THE test Bluetooth performance is a challenge as
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this information Is not available in a way that can be ea,sily consumed and validated.
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Jnformat;on on APPie's health strategy: February 2019
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(CTH)
This past year the company announced its first two [US] Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) clearances including a De Novo clearance for a built-in Apple Watch ECG feature that
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-w'ent live in December 2018. It also announced numerous hospital partners for Apple's
Health Records Initiative, lncluding, most recently, the [US) Department of Veterans Affairs.
ACT
And in interviews, CEO nm Cook hasn't downplayed Apple's health efforts. On the
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contrary, in January he told Mad Money's Jim Cramer "I do think, looking back, in the
future, [you'll say] Apple's most-important contribution to mankind has been in health."
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