Supporting Local Government COVID-19 Response and Recovery
A new COVID Open Data Hub on Stae provides easy access to COVID-related datasets to help civic leaders manage and improve response and recovery efforts.
The COVID-19 pandemic has required state and local governments to address some of the most complex public policy challenges of the last century. We at Stae want to help government leaders navigate these challenges, by making all forms of civic data more portable, interoperable, and usable.
As a first step, we have collected a variety of datasets related to emergency response — including COVID-19 reported cases and deaths, vulnerable populations, and medical facility locations and capacities — into a new COVID-19 Open Data Hub that will support public officials as they manage local recovery efforts. This curated data repository can be immediately accessed and put into use by any and all civic leaders.
The scale of this global pandemic is unprecedented, and we in the civic technology community know that tech and data alone will not save us. Seeing the “curve” means nothing without the ability to flatten it, and that requires fully empowered public institutions. After all, it is local leaders who shoulder the day-to-day responsibilities of providing emergency response services to vulnerable populations and leading economic recovery.
To support these massive public service challenges, we curated a set of trustworthy COVID-relevant datasets and made them freely available on our platform to anyone who needs them. These data sources include:
- COVID Case and death data from New York Times and Johns Hopkins CSSE, under our “Infectious Disease Measurement” data type.
- Hospital service area geographies and high-risk population estimates from Dartmouth Atlas, under our “Hospital Service Area” data type.
- Locations and capacities of hospitals and nursing homes via the Homeland Infrastructure Foundation, under our “Medical Facility” data type.
- Pharmacy Location and active status data from RxOpen/Healthcare Ready, under our “Pharmacy” data type.
Local governments who rely on Stae’s Civic Intelligence platform can now easily access the data relevant to their jurisdictions alongside the local data already in their accounts, and then visualize, analyze, integrate with government systems, and share with experts and decision makers. Cities can now visualize their communities through the lens of where their high-risk populations live, and where they seek medical care first. They can also add relevant data for their county to their public web portals.
Next steps + how to get involved
We see this as a first small step in what we hope will be a continuing effort, so stay tuned, and feel free to get in touch. We’d love feedback on additional data sources and data management tools to help civic leaders handle various aspects of COVID response and recovery.
Do you have a COVID-19 data source to suggest or a specific COVID-19 data use case? Are you a local government employee looking for data management tools to support response and recovery efforts? Contact us here or email us at we@stae.co to get in touch about collaboration, data sharing or a free trial.
Stae well,
Stephen
