Citizen initiative: www.covid19data.no

Norway confirmed its first case of Coronavirus on the 26th of February 2020. As the number of infections continued to increase, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health started releasing daily reports on the 9th of March 2020. Public interest peaked with Norway locking down on the 12th of March. Local transmissions and outbreaks generated a growing demand for more granular data than the county-based level reported released by public health officials. The absence of detailed data created a market for some media outlets to release district-level situation reports behind paywalls (Aftenposten). Others implemented daily Corona-trackers on their front page by sourcing information from Norway's 358 municipalities (VG). While public authorities were tracking local infections and media published their results, none of the actors released detailed information in a complete, timely and accessible manner. Covid19data.no was launched as a citizen initiative on the 16th of April 2020 to provide historic and daily updated data for all municipalities and districts in Norway. The launch included daily updated dashboards and the release of all data in a cleaned, granular and machine-readable format. Soon, other citizens began contributing to the project, adding to the already existing list of data sources. The citizen initiative was launched 2 months before the Norwegian Institute of Public Health began releasing similar detailed data. Citizen dashboards can represent a valuable addition to public reporting, but also represent new challenges: How can you trust data and dashboards from a non-official actor? How do you keep data updated when running the dashboard on a voluntary basis? How are metrics and visualizations decided when creators have no experience with public health and epidemics? How do multiple collaborators effectively work together when they have never met before? This presentation will focus on the role of citizen initiatives, their challenges and opportunities.