An Australian consortium of companies with a proven track record of delivering high-capacity and innovative solutions has developed the goPassport app that will enable safe travel to Australia as the nation emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Consortium Chair, Matt McKinley, stated that the app provides Australian authorities with the tools required to ensure that overseas travellers represent no increased health risk to the Australian community.
Matt McKinley is the CEO of didigo, a successful Australian Itinerary Management and travel documentation solution used by some of the world’s largest tour operators.
He has been joined by Knowesis, which has built and deployed SIFT, a real-time decision engine and analytics software specialising in large scale, real-time analytics environments.
“Australia has worked very hard to be one of the safest places in the world to visit. goPassport will help keep it that way while supporting a safe restart of Australian economic activity” said Mark Radford, Head of Knowesis, and part of the private consortium.
Both are supported by AlphaZetta which can boast access to over 180 analytics and data specialists in Australia and more than 600 around the world.
Tony Ohlsson, co-founder of Alpha Zetta said that “the opportunity to leverage a very large international pool of experts to fight this pandemic is one of the highlights in my career. It is very rare that many of us are given the opportunity to do such important work.”
How goPassport will work
Travellers wishing to visit Australia as students, tourists or for other reasons upload the app when they book their travel. The app then ensures that all necessary pre-travel steps have been completed, including any mandatory COVID-19 pre-travel tests.
It allows Australia’s border authorities to automatically check the test status for all travellers before they board an Australia-bound flight. Anybody who does not have clear test results can be refused permission to board a flight. The app continues to monitor the travellers as they arrive, directing them to any required testing, isolation or quarantine.
goPassport can be used to monitor travellers who are in quarantine or isolation and alerts health authorities if a traveller leaves these locations without approval. An artificial intelligence engine is designed to detect misuse of the app by the traveller.
goPassport is compatible with Australia’s COVIDSafe system. It fully supports any required contact tracing by State/Territory health departments to very quickly respond to any detected health issue.
The travellers will also see any areas in Australia where travel is not recommend or prohibited. McKinley noted that, while our focus is on pandemics, travellers should also be informed if bushfires, floods or other disasters make it inadvisable to visit/stay.
McKinley stressed that this combination of proven, existing platforms and capability, when combined with the innovative talents of the consortium, will give Australia the ability to tightly control who comes to Australia and under what circumstances. Our borders will be able to allow safe travel for all.