Overview

The Corona pandemic (COVID-19) Burst into our life at the beginning of 2020. In March of this year, it hit the Israeli society and forced it to adapt quickly to a new rapid reality, when new regulations and health policies change several times a month. To gain the public’s cooperation and establish trust and transparency with the people, the Israeli Ministry of Health decided to externalize Corona’s data.

MOH reached us (Deloitte), and we built a dashboard that communicates the always-changing and
never-ending data and insights. The data transform into clear and communicative charts that track the virus's effect on Israel in different aspects.

I was assigned to this project a few months after it began, so this case study will deal with the improvement I worked on.

Our Users

1. The general public - for example, a teenager interested in confirmed COVID-19 cases, seriously ill patients’ numbers, or parents trying to decide if their child can go to school the next day. In the war against COVID-19, the citizens are not passive information consumers but significant and influential players in preventing and dealing with the pandemic. Many users used the dashboard like a weather forecast which helped them make daily decisions, and during the peak times of the lockdowns and different waves of infections, the dashboard’s traffic got higher.

2. Journalists, social influencers, data enthusiasts, and public health researchers - to supply data for communicative purposes, such as news and articles on newspapers, blogs, and social media.
   MOH highly prioritized accurate media coverage in times of uncertainty and understood the power of accessible data for media representatives. The corona pandemic reemphasized the critical importance of professional, high-quality, independent communication, whose role is to provide the public with reliable information during health, economic and political crisis accompanied by uncertainty and massive amounts of fake news.

3. Academic researchers - to supply data and analytics for local and worldwide research purposes. Israel’s unique health system structure attracts academic researchers, also due to the population’s heterogeneity and leading the COVID-19 vaccines process.

4. Stakeholders and decision-makers - to supply data for health policymakers. They establish guidelines regarding the coronavirus for the public, business owners, professionals, local authorities, medical teams, and health system members. Vaccines, isolation, green pass, and COVID certificate, for example, are all topics in our daily life that rely on data-driven policies.

The challenges

The dashboard is a test. A test of how fragile the public’s trust in the MOH is. Of how transparent MOH is in revealing data - and generally, in its decision-making. All the more so, in the middle of an international pandemic and a political crisis, which contributes its part to the general public’s suspicion against official authorities and governments worldwide.

1. Speed and Relevancy - implementing the data as it unfolds. working against the clock on such a dynamic and ever-changing project, also considering the amount of work needed and the project's importance. 

2. Prioritization - limited space on the screen and data overload drove discussions about each data's value and allocating a proper spot for it.

3. Data Maturity (Low Initial numbers) - as the vaccination program was just launched, displaying a percentage such as 0.00001% was somewhat unusual. We’ve discussed the possibility of waiting a week and allowing a volume to accumulate before combining the data.

4. Data Availability - data was integrated from different official sources and not constantly updated on time; therefore, MOH had to insert it manually.

5. Data Levels and granularity - we had to decide how much data was too much, which might prevent the users from getting the overall picture of the stats. For example, medical staffs or the entire population - the dilemma was whether we should display available data at that point (vaccination in medical staffs only), or wait until there’s data for the general population since the latter will always summon inquiries.