The local role is based upon the best understanding of target audiences, such as affected populations. The local government is expected to communicate needs and justifications to the state government. The workshop participants engaged in a wide-ranging discussion of electronic information systems, triggered by deliberations over this question. Policies and procedures for data collection, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination need to be clearly established before serious consideration is given to electronic issues. Transaction processing should be integrated into report generation.
Electronic networks hold the promise of rapid availability of data.
Workshop participants created a list of contents, as well as a list of six general target audiences, and produced a matrix combination of those two lists, with a judgement of the level of detail specified in each cell. The conclusions drawn from the matrix are summarized in this consensus statement. Alerts are issued to the general public and to populations at elevated risk, as well as to clinicians on occasion, and are limited in detail. Standard surveillance reports are generally intermediate in detail. The extensively detailed reports are used by prevention program managers and researchers.