Governments and the use of data dashboards to communicate to the public and support decision-making: A case of COVID-19 dashboards and a way forward

Dashboards are a digital tool for reporting data visually, typically designed as a single screen dynamic overview intended to quickly and effectively present users with critical information to act upon. Following decades of use in the corporate sector, dashboards started gaining momentum in health care recently, mostly for organizational management and health system performance assessment. In early 2020, publicly available (and internal) COVID-19 dashboards were rapidly launched worldwide to communicate pandemic-related information to the public and to be used as decision-making aid for governments and public health authorities. The speed and uniformity at which countries worldwide embraced dashboards as a reporting and decision-making modality was unprecedented. Our global research team of health system and service researchers studied the phenomena from different perspectives during 2020 and 2021. We looked at (1) what makes COVID-19 dashboards actionable, on a global sample of 158 dashboards from 53 countries; (2) how dashboards change, on examples of Canada and the Netherlands; and (3) how can the development process of COVID-19 dashboards be described from the perspective of their governmentally-appointed developers, on a sample of 33 WHO European region countries. Through our research we have (1) identified seven features common to actionable dashboards worldwide; (2) mapped areas of dashboard improvements; and (3) documented common barriers, enablers and lessons derived from the experiences of dashboard developers. Findings from our series of COVID-19 dashboard-related research work provide interesting insights on governmental use of digital tools, such as dashboards, for managing the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. The ubiquitous use of dashboards by governments, for reporting to the public and supporting internal decision-making, was mostly based on an international ripple effect, rather than the activation of pre-existing emergency response plans. The uptake of dashboards appears triggered by early adopters and sustained by a proactive commercial software vendor market. This often meant launching data-rich dashboards but with suboptimally defined purpose and target audience and little attention paid to providing easy-to-understand information, including relevant and meaningful disaggregation and geographical details. An interesting finding is also the motivation, competence and readiness to help from non-governmental players - academics, NGOs, IT, media sector – which heavily influenced data dashboard landscape during the pandemic. This especially holds true for dashboard software vendors and their role in the process. Dashboards feed on relevant, accurate and timely data, which most national health information systems initially struggled to provide accurate. Our findings signal the need for continued investment in national-level data sources that are integrated and interoperable, and digital infrastructure that spans secondary, primary and social care systems. Dashboards are an important communication tool but, like other digital technologies, they are no silver bullet. Features of dashboards must fit with their intended purposes, while the actionability of data for its end users relies on the extent to which the information is communicated clearly and understood. Governments need to consider systematic approaches to exploring user needs and use patterns, in order to help dashboards bridge the gap between being a managerial tool and a public reporting device.