Disseminate and incentivize data use

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National statistical offices need to focus on disseminating open data in a way that facilitates and incentivizes data use to contribute to the fight against the pandemic. National statistical offices should provide data on health resources and monitoring efforts using well-designed websites or data portals that are easy to find and navigate, include data visualizations, and provide a variety of download formats. The resources below provide guidance on disseminating and incentivizing the use of data.

Guidelines and tools available to support NSO efforts to disseminate and incentivize data use

• The Principles of SDG Indicator Reporting and Dissemination Platforms and guidelines for their application created by the United Nations Statistics Division and Department of Economic and Social Affairs discusses best practices on the creation and management of data platforms.
• The Data Site Evaluation Toolkit (DSET) by Open Data Watch can be used as a guide to the elements of open data, technical functionality, and dissemination strategies that should be considered when creating or managing a data site.
• Google’s guide on improving the search engine optimization (SEO) of websites is a great place to start improving data dissemination efforts by improving a site’s ranking in Google.

Tools and resources to create dashboards and visualizations

• Top 15 R resources on Novel COVID-19 Coronavirus by Towards Data Science
• Article on open-source dashboards and libraries by Towards Data Science
• IBM offers free tools to track COVID-19 cases
• Tableau Hub of free data visualizations resources

Examples of dashboards on COVID-19

• WHO has created an interactive dashboard with the latest global numbers and numbers by country of COVID-19 cases on a daily basis.
• Johns Hopkins created a global dashboard to track the spread of the virus.
• UpCode created a dashboard on the spread of coronavirus in Singapore.
• The Italian Department of Civil Protection developed an interactive web-based dashboard to track COVID-19 based on data collected from the ministry of health.
• UK Office for National Statistics has created a page on the latest COVID-19 data and analyses as well as its effect on the economy and society.