WA Health needs to improve controls to better protect the personal data collected about COVID-19 positive individuals for contact tracing purposes, the Western Australian auditor-general says, following an audit into its Public Health COVID Unified System (PHOCUS) initiative.

WA Auditor-General Caroline Spencer said that while the PHOCUS system had to be rolled out quickly and succeeded in playing a significant role to support WA Health’s contact tracing efforts, she expected to find “robust access controls” in place given the sensitive nature of information it collected. Instead, the audit found a number of significant weaknesses, she said.