---
id: "coronavirus-smarter-crowdsourcing:recommendations/increase-government-capacity"
type: "GovLab policy recommendation"
title: "Increase Government Capacity"
url: "https://coronavirus.smartercrowdsourcing.org/recommendations/increase-government-capacity"
summary: "Increase government capacity to use public health monitoring and surveillance information to make policy and programmatic decisions."
source: "The GovLab (coronavirus.smartercrowdsourcing.org)"
licence: "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)"
---

# Increase Government Capacity

Increase government capacity to use public health monitoring and surveillance information to make policy and programmatic decisions.

- Part of: [Smarter Crowdsourcing in the Age of Coronavirus](https://coronavirus.smartercrowdsourcing.org/), [all recommendations](https://coronavirus.smartercrowdsourcing.org/recommendations)

## Strategy 1

Increase government capacity to use public health monitoring and surveillance data by training government workers in data science and partnering with data scientists.

- Timeframe: 6-12 Months (long)
- Audience: Private Sector, Academia, Government Workers
- Type: Data, Technology/Innovation, Capacity Building
- Strategy page: https://coronavirus.smartercrowdsourcing.org/strategies/increase-government-capacity-to-use-public-health-

### Actions governments should take (strategy 1)

1. Allocate funds from current training budgets to fully or partially fund employees to attend existing data science programs offered by local or international universities.
2. Partner with universities or research institutions to develop training programs for government staff and workers.
3. Partner with universities or research institutions for secondments of subject matter experts who can fill capacity gaps while training programs are being established.
4. Identify cultural and institutional features of the community that may influence the quality of monitoring data, including information about any sources of distrust that may influence the community’s response to the program. Include specific modules or materials on accounting for these biases in the data.
5. Ensure that the partnership is led by a government counterpart that is passionate to get things done and who has access to resources and technical knowledge of data analysis.
6. Partner with a data science company by carrying out a bidding process to contract an external provider. In-house data expertise is necessary to define the scope of the project, evaluate the proposals and manage the project.
7. Include modules that teach government workers to design, maintain, and publish data dashboards that are updated regularly and show progress on metrics.
8. Fund and assign a data science team to specifically take charge of public-facing data communications, including data dashboards.
9. Conduct training at the local level and/or support the hiring of health IT specialists and health informatics specialists.

### Examples from around the world (strategy 1)

1. [n Central America, the RECAINSA is working very closely with COMISCA (https://www.sica.int/comisca/) to provide training for epidemiologists and to strengthen the Government's capacity to collect and use data efficiently.](https://www.sica.int/comisca)

## Strategy 2

Develop,use,and refine multiple predictive models to help with pandemic planning,preparedness,and response.

- Timeframe: 1-3 Months (immediate)
- Audience: Academia, Government Workers
- Type: Research, Data, Technology/Innovation
- Strategy page: https://coronavirus.smartercrowdsourcing.org/strategies/develop,use,and-refine-multiple-predictive-models-

### Actions governments should take (strategy 2)

1. Estimate preparedness of and potential impact on healthcare infrastructure.
2. Use open-source data to predict and model viral spread.
3. Be creative in finding new data sources such as government hotline data.
4. Get the public to collect and contribute data. Citizen participation can be leveraged in data collection. When the community’s contribution is built on trust, data collection can be increased and improved, especially if the community can see a correlation to useful public services provided as a result.
5. Establish public-private data partnerships (data collaboratives) with the private sector. Data sources that illustrate human movement are especially valuable and those can be sourced from telephone companies. Data sources that illustrate behavior are also valuable and these can be sourced from search engine companies.
6. Incentivize engagement with the data-science community through prize-backed challenges. Use challenges to rapidly develop alternative predictive models and leverage outside expertise.
7. Assess the risks and biases inherent in the data in order to plan for and mitigate unintended consequences.
8. Increase data analytics capacity of public health officials in partnership with research institutions and universities through training and other knowledge transfer opportunities.

### Examples from around the world (strategy 2)

1. Open source models like [Facebook AI](https://ai.facebook.com/blog/using-ai-to-help-health-experts-address-the-covid-19-pandemic/) model or the [UPenn Chime Model](https://oto.med.upenn.edu/2020/03/31/covid-19-hospital-impact-model-for-epidemics-chime/) can be used to predict impacts on specific populations, such as elderly populations or those living in [long term care facilities](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2767062). They have also been used to 1) predict cases and deaths, 2) predict hospital level demand, 3) support bed capacity planning, 4) predict peak estimation, 5) support PPE estimation, and 6) estimate second wave modeling.

## Strategy 3

Create a COVID-19 “war room”,emergency operation center,or nerve center that centralizes data and decision making.

- Timeframe: 3-6 Months (medium)
- Audience: Government Workers
- Type: Policy/Legislative/Regulatory, Data, Technology/Innovation, Communications, Capacity Building, Procurement/Logistics
- Strategy page: https://coronavirus.smartercrowdsourcing.org/strategies/create-a-covid-19-%E2%80%9Cwar-room%E2%80%9D,emergency-operati

### Actions governments should take (strategy 3)

1. Ensure that the nerve center follows an established management system such as the National Incident Management System (NIMS) in the USA or the Incident Coordination System in Australia.
2. Develop a data linkage environment or platform that rapidly and confidentially supports data matching, de-identification, and use. This platform/environment should integrate data from different sources and allow officials to access it for decision making through a user-friendly interfaces.
3. Establish clear and written responsibilities and expectations for nerve center staff based on their experience and expertise. Functions should include leadership and management, operations, information management, logistics, media, security, administration, and technology.
4. Standardize an organizational structure based on clear top-down command and control with all the commanding positions arranged hierarchically.
5. Continually update and manage contact information for all officials and staff so that no gaps in service occur.
6. Conduct exercises to evaluate the nerve center ability to respond to specific and general public health emergencies.
7. Maintain situational awareness by integrating multiple data streams from government databases, healthcare surveillance systems, mass media, online social media, hotlines, and other data sources.
8. Strengthen information management by developing methods for risk detection and assessment.

### Examples from around the world (strategy 3)

1. [Mckinsey & Company has developed resources for setting up a “minimum viable nerve center” that is designed to solve (1) inadeate discovery - or the “depths, extent and velocity of the crisis”; (2) poor decision making; (3) constrained solution design; and (4) delivery failure. Their model is applicable to individual organizations and also to governments.](https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/risk/our-insights/responding-to-coronavirus-the-minimum-viable-nerve-center)