#Data4COVID19 Round-Up: 12 June
By: Andrew J. Zahuranec
Tags: Data4covid19, Covid 19, Data Stewardship, Data Collaborative, Data

Welcome to The GovLab’s #Data4COVID19 Round-Up. This temporary, weekly curation will provide you with notable updates to the #Data4COVID19 data collaborative repository and other information meant to facilitate data stewardship in the ongoing pandemic. If you received this email from a colleague, you can subscribe here.

Photo by Flickr/spurekar licensed under CC BY 2.0

What’s New in the #Data4COVID19 Repository

The #Data4COVID19 repository saw 9 new additions last week. The repository now includes 305 projects. With this latest update, projects can be found in:

East Asia and Pacific: 15 (+1)

Europe and Central Asia: 61 (+0)

Latin America and the Caribbean: 12 (+0)

Middle East and North Africa: 1 (+0)

North America: 63 (+2)

South Asia: 3 (+0)

Sub-Saharan Africa: 14 (+1)

Global: 95 (+4)

While there remain 27 data challenges, we added one addition to our list of requests for data requests for data. There are now 14 requests listed.



Each week, we will highlight a few of those recent additions to the repository that you might have missed. These examples illustrate innovative methods, appear demand-driven, or otherwise demonstrate an attempt to translate insights into action. We also aspire, to the extent possible, to make the selections geographically diverse. A project’s inclusion does not indicate endorsement by The GovLab or confirmation of its success in meeting its goals.



Below are a few of the most notable additions to the repository. This week, as many governments begin to move toward reopening, we focus on three different initiatives to improve government efforts to address the ongoing pandemic. These efforts include facilitating disease research, improving disaster monitoring capabilities, and supporting localized response efforts.



National COVID Cohort Collaborative: The National COVID Cohort Collaborative is an initiative led by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at the US National Institutes of Health to develop a data management platform that can harmonize the large clinical datasets being created through ongoing research efforts focused on COVID-19. The organizers intend for the initiative to lead to a centralized national data resource that researchers can use to study COVID-19 and identify treatments. The effort will allow for faster collection and analysis of combined datasets.



Data Ventures COVID-19 Response Efforts: Data Ventures, a data broker and the commercial arm of New Zealand’s statistical agency, is supporting the work of New Zealand’s National Crisis Management Centre in COVID-19 response. This work includes supplying the centre with datasets and insights to support rapid decision-making as it seeks to limit the spread of COVID-19 in the country. It also includes the production of COVID-19 Population Reports, which seeks to measure the mobility of the population in six sectors: recreation; residential; retail; tourism; transit; and the workplace. These reports are created weekly and available for public consumption. The information provides residents an understanding of how the country is responding to the crisis.



National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership Convening Around Local COVID-19 Response: Staff from the Urban Institute, through the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, are looking for examples of how its partners and other local groups are using data to improve their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Staff are looking especially for examples about better sharing trends in COVID-19 infections; identifying which communities face health or financial risks; identifying the local implications of response efforts; providing a “help desk” to nonprofits; and analyzing early impacts of response efforts on the economy. Individuals with compelling examples are asked to contact the organization via email to support the creation of a community of practice.

You can also find additional resources related to data stewardship and data collaboration here.