From its very first days, the Covid crisis was a data disaster as well as a public health one. After two decades of e-government boosterism, most countries, even developed ones, have thousands of government-run databases that don’t talk to each other, are too slow to yield the insights necessary to manage a crisis of these proportions and lack transparency. This technological failure — or, rather, failure of political will — has likely added to the virus’s death toll and deepened the economic recession. Now comes yet more evidence that governments remain woefully and dangerously behind the curve when it comes to managing data: the struggle to create the vaccine passports that could speed an economic reopening.
OP-ED
Leonid Bershidsky: Vaccine passports are latest victim of sloppy government data
Members of the public pass an NHS Scotland vaccination centre set up at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC) in Edinburgh on Feb. 1, 2021.
