THE SA government has turned away from its Alert SA app following a failure during a day of catastrophic conditions at the weekend.
The app, provided by Vic-based company Ripe Intelligence failed to provide updates on bushfire information.
Emergency Services Minister Chris Picton said he had met with the chief executive officer of the company but had not been provided adequate assurance that another failure would not happen in the future.
“(The) outage of the Alert SA app was a disgrace – on the day when South Australians faces the worst fire conditions seen in years, the Alert SA app needed to perform and it didn’t,” he said.
“I am not satisfied, after meeting with Ripe Intelligence, that the failure experienced won’t be repeated and I, and our emergency services, have lost confidence in this app to provide the 99.9 per cent reliability as is stipulated in our contract.”
Mr Picton said the government had decided not to renew the contract with Ripe Intelligence, which expires in June.
He encouraged SA residents to use traditional methods, such as the Country Fire Service website, social media, ABC radio alerts, the Bushfire Information hotline and the national Emergency Alert system, which all functioned.
This comes after the app had previously experienced a failure to function in October for several hours, caused by a different error, which had been fixed.
Mr Picton said the government was looking for a new mobile solution that will be controlled by emergency services.
Emergency Services Opposition spokesperson Stephen Knoll said the government had spent more money advertising the Alert SA app, than on operating costs.
Freedom of Information documents showed the government had spent $404,000 on an advertising campaign.
“Surely its the state government’s responsibility to purchase and maintain the best app possible so that lives are not put at risk, instead of splurging on advertising an app which isn’t up to scratch,” Mr Knoll said.
He said the government needed to run an advertising campaign advising people, some of whom may have been on holidays, not a rely on the app.
“Labor has spent millions on government ads in recent years,” he said.
“Given that this failure has led to a chaotic and dangerous situaiton, they should run a legitimate advertising campaign for once, which tells people not to use Alert SA – which would be money well spent.”