During the pandemic, data dashboards took on a more prominent public role — without much time to plan.
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The Rise of the Pandemic Dashboard
Governments around the world have created online tools for the public to view the latest data on Covid-19, but some platforms are better than others.
In 2019, the website of Public Health England (PHE) wasn’t exactly racking up the hits. People visited it occasionally for general public health information, or some key data insights. But it was not much compared to the 19 million hits the site now receives on a weekly basis, with spikes of 300,000 users hanging around on the website at 4 p.m. every day, waiting for the updated Covid-19 numbers to publish.
PHE is one of the hundreds of government departments that had to quickly learn how to present data to the public as Covid-19 spread from country to country across the globe. The resulting platforms — while sometimes flawed because of incomplete data, technology constraints or just awkward presentation — have become a mainstay of the pandemic. They’ve helped people assess risk and understand what’s happening near them. And, thanks to the multiple charts and maps available through these interfaces, they’ve also contributed in developing data literacy around the world.