TALOFAPASS system a “waste of money and time” one faipule says
Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Rep. Lua’itaua Gene Pan believes that the move by the American Samoa Government (ASG) to award almost $7million to fund the TALOFAPASS computer system — which was described by the director of the local Medicaid office, Sandra King Young during her testimony before the Health Committee as “simple software” — was a waste of money and time.
Based on King Young’s testimony during the House hearing last week Thursday, about the service performed by the online platform, Luaitaua said these services can also be done by well trained sons and daughters of American Samoa, and that the money used to fund TALOFAPASS could have been used instead to a build a new infrastructure project to serve the people. (He did not identify what the new infrastructure project would be.)
Lua’itaua said that if these are the type of services the TALOFAPASS software is doing for the people such as GIS mapping (geographic information system) using Google mapping — which is a free service — then “somebody is collecting these services for free and selling it to American Samoa for almost $7 million.”
King Young, along with Department of Health director, Motusa Tuileana Nua and Dr. Amoa were called to testify last Thursday, before the House Health Committee about health issues, including the continued spread of the virus and the home quarantine of people who tested positive with COVID-19.
The hearing was chaired by the committee vice chairman, Rep. Logoituau Mark Atafua. The committee chairwoman, Rep. Andra Tereise Samoa was also present during the hearing, which lasted over 3 hours.
TESTIMONY
In her statement to members of the committee, King Young noted she was asked to provide information concerning two specific issues:
1. TALOFAPASS, the online platform solution that ASG created in 2021 in order to manage and continue travel during the pandemic; and,
2. Capture Diagnostics, one of American Samoa’s two testing centers in the State of Hawaii.
In her testimony, and based on the information provided to the Health committee, the TALOFAPASS online platform is a web-based system to screen passengers entering the territory. It’s setup so that a traveler (resident or visitor) can go to the website and prepare a profile, where he/ she uploads required travel documents, which includes their COVID-19 vaccination card.
The government then screens these documents to make sure the person qualifies to enter the territory.
When asked to describe what TALOFAPASS system is, King Young stated that it’s “simply communication software for information gathering” for the government, so it can manage the information and it’s only one piece of the set of tools the government has to “try and protect our territory”.
She said that it was just a simple tool system to make things easier for our people and the government, and pointed out that the TALOFAPASS system cannot stop the virus from entering American Samoa because it’s people who carry the virus, and the only way for us to keep the virus out is to shut down our borders and that’s the zero tolerance, one hundred percentage proof way that you can avoid the virus from entering our community.
King-Young apologized to the committee stating that it’s very clear that they didn’t do a very good job as a government in explaining to the community the main purpose of the TALOFAPASS platform, and that has caused a lot of misinformation and also false allegations to be lodged against her and her role in the project. (Refer to Samoa News front page story in Friday, Mar. 18 issue.)
According to King Young, neither she nor any member of her family businesses are in any way affiliated with the TALOFAPASS project or have received any financial benefit from this project. As reported in last Friday’s Samoa News, in her statement, she explained that the project was created to help the government to continue repatriation flights after July 2021 safely, by allowing the government to manage the required information, i.e. travel documents including proof of vaccination, tests for COVID, as well as quarantine requirements.
It doesn’t deny people nor approve anybody, she said. It’s the government who does that work and all that the TALOFAPASS software system does is communicate the info/ data to ASG in order for the appropriate agencies to make decisions.
Regarding remarks about her and the system, she said, “We did our job as the best that we can do to serve our people.”
She further stated that in things like this when it comes up with these slanderous accusations of fraud that it is the number one priority of her directorship to protect the Medicaid office from such fraud and abuse.
After listening to King Young’s testimony, Vice Speaker of the House, Fetu Fetui Jr stated that he’s very confused and at the same time disappointed for so many things happening in the government, while people are suffering and living in fear with the spread of the virus.
Fetu said that things were much easier for passengers who travel to American Samoa while the COVID testing and swabbing were under the supervision of the government during the Lolo and Lemanu administration.
However, ever since the TALOFAPASS system kicked in, a lot of things changed very quickly and people find it very difficult to hook up with the new system.
“So who are these people working for the TALOFAPASS computer system?” Fetu wanted to know.
King Young explained that the people are doctors and laboratory technicians who are well trained and they have also met all the requirements according to the CDC guidelines. Furthermore, according to her, these people are also licensed by the State of Hawaii.
“We do our best to vet Medicare providers so they can assure us that they can provide the best service for our people,” she told the committee.
King Young also informed members of the committee that the DoH period of emergency is coming to an end next month and the local Medicaid office will no longer provide coverage for the free testing that Capture Diagnostics (CD) is doing, starting with the next Hawaiian Airlines flight, which is Mar. 31.
The local Medicaid director said that it would then be up to the traveler to go and find their own testing site and pay for their own testing if payment is required. And the traveler is now responsible for uploading their proof of test and results to TALOFAPASS.
When asked to explain the role of Capture Diagnostics, King Young said it is one of the two testing centers that Medicaid enrolled in, in Hawaii, to do testing and deal with testing at the Hawaii quarantine site.
“I don’t know who they are, we’re not affiliated with them. They are simply a well respected emergency testing center in the State of Hawaii, with 105 testing centers across the states,” she said.
ASG used the services of Capture Diagnostics because of this, King Young noted, and because they are connected to a Laboratory system — and because of that, “when our people go to get tested, their information is connected to a link called API, which is also connected to TALOFAPASS, the link Capture Diagnostics uses, so all test results automatically upload to the TALOFAPASS account to allow DoH to review test results and to approve a traveler to travel to American Samoa.”
ASG doesn’t have the resources to do all the testing and data collection work, so, they reached out to the Capture Diagnostics for their services, according to King Young.
FAIPULE RESPONSES
Members of the Health committee were not happy with the fact that the local Medicaid office will no longer provide free testing for our people in Hawaii, with Fetu saying the cost of COVID testing will be a heavy burden to our families wanting to travel to American Samoa.
Rep. Faimealelei Anthony Fu’e Allen said that one of the reasons for the hearing is to allow King Young to tell the committee who is the person who initiated the plan to bring in the TALOFAPASS software system.
Faimealelei said he did his homework about the software and now he understands about the whole issue and the person who initiated the plan. According to Faimealelei, it was the “government leaders” who initiated the idea for TALOFAPASS, not King Young.
King Young agreed.
Calling the TALOFAPASS “very simple software”, Lua’itaua wanted to know why ASG spent so much money on this project if this is simple software.
Lua’itaua said a lot of well-trained sons and daughters of American Samoa working in various departments, such as DOC, DLH, DoH, can do this online tracking and mapping.
The faipule believes that somebody is lying about this project. He believes that spending almost $7 million to fund the “simple” computer software is a waste of time, while there are many priorities ASG should have considered first instead of the TALOFAPASS project.
King Young apologized if she used the word “simple software” to describe the TALOFAPASS computer system.
“That’s not what it is. It much more than that,” she stated.
“The system is one of the most complex systems and what you see on the website is just 20% of the system. The other 80% of the system is what we called the ‘ASG works’,” or in techie parlance — the back end.
She explained that they work together with personnel from many different departments such as DOC, DPS, DHL in putting together all the data needed. She further stated that they also work closely with the DOC mapping team, who also is the mapping team for the Task Force that are assisting DoH with the data for positive cases.
“If this is what you’re telling us, then, it appears that ASG is doing all the work, but somebody is getting all this money,” Lua’itaua fired back.