Professor Katina Michael teaches Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering at Arizona State University, and is also affiliated with the University of Wollongong.
On the 26th of April, Australians were able to start downloading COVIDSafe, a 2 million dollar application developed by the federal government's Digital Transformation Agency, aimed at automated contact tracing for coronavirus cases and those who come into proximity with unsuspecting carriers of the virus.
''We've seen an unprecedented rise in the use of applications for mobile devices related to fighting Covid-19 worldwide. Australia chose to mimic Singapore, taking their TraceTogether app and adapting it to the Australian environment'' said Professor Michael.
''The government said that the app would be voluntary and would help Australians get back to work and restart the economy''.
According to professor Michael, about 6.7 million Australians have downloaded the app, four months after its release.
'However it is not clear how many of these downloads are active users or how the government counts the downloads'' she said.
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Yet while Victoria currently experiencing a second wave of the virus and NSW worrying over its increasing number of cases, the app is having trouble detecting any new cases that the authorities haven't already detected with manual contact tracing.
'For example in NSW, the app failed to record two people that were in close proximity, despite the fact that both users had downloaded the app, activated it and had it running in their phone's home screen'' said professor Michael. 
In cooperation with the tech community in Australia, professor Michael managed to detect several issues the app has presented ever since it became available.
Minister for Health Greg Hunt launches the new government app CovidSafe at Parliament House in Canberra. Source: AAP
Among other things, the app would consume the phone's battery too fast, it would send wrong notifications and certain smartphone brands would not be able to interact with the Bluetooth signal necessary for the app to function.
''Iphones could not communicate with Android phones or with each other, to pass that unique key. Among the biggest bugs was the app was not working to log phones coming into proximity with each other, it could not measure the duration that someone was in the proximity of another and the distance between the two phones and the third thing was, that the Bluetooth required for the emitting of signals, to measure proximity, was absent from many phones, except the latest handsets.''
In addition, despite being a non-line of sight technology, Bluetooth would encounter problems with the surrounding environment such as concrete or cement.
''There was little communication with the users. The government said they had to act quickly to secure the Australian people but it was an incomplete app that did not undergo through proper field trials, user testing and more'' said professor Michael.
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She does not consider the app reliable in its current form, but believes that if the authorities begin taking into account the feedback from the app's users and the technical community in Australia, that they wlll be better prepared for a 'reboot' of COVIDSafe in the future.
Professor Michael notes however that the question remains on whether our answers in preventing the spread of coronavirus such as washing our hands often and quarantine, make automated applications such as COVIDSafe unnecessary.
''We need to understand that not everyone owns a mobile phone, that some families only use a single device. Not everyone has the latest devices, or knows how to use them. For some the app might not even be available in their language.''
Press Play to hear the full interview in Greek.
