Making things open is making things better

Coronavirus California
ca.gov coronavirus website

California’s Governor Newsom just launched the state’s new coronavirus website, covid19.ca.gov. It is simple, clear and fast, as it must be at this time of crisis.

It was built in a few days by the Governor’s excellent new alpha.ca.gov team in Sacramento. Having worked with them since the autumn, we’re not surprised that Angie, Mike and a quickly assembled cross-government team have delivered for their state when the need struck.

And it’s been notable to observe how Angie and her team are determined to learn everything possible from the teams delivering similar coronavirus websites in other jurisdictions – not just here in the UK but also in places like Iceland,New Zealand and Peru. Peru’s page to to let people apply for freedom of movement and quarantine exemption was built in just 36 hours.

Meanwhile, the Nova Scotia Digital Service (working with Communications Nova Scotia) shipped a simple virus screening tool from scratch in 48 hours and published the code open source. They worked remotely, across departments, and continue to iterate it as medical advice changes.

And the open source notification platforms in the UK, Canada and Australia are setting up new services on their platforms in a matter of minutes, allowing them to send millions of vital sms and email messages.

I could go on – there’s just so much informal and formal sharing going on between teams in different governments, all focused on how to get the right message out in the right way to the right people. A cross-border response to a cross-border crisis. We’re collecting a list of the sites these teams have delivered at the bottom of this blog post.

These teams have made things open. And it’s making things better for us all.

Thank you, all of you.

An ever-growing list of coronavirus advice websites from governments around the world

Please tell us in a comment below (or a tweet) if you know of any we’ve missed, or if we’ve linked to the wrong one (sorry).

Countries

UK National Health Service

UK Government

Peru

Argentina

South Korea

New Zealand

Canada

France

Netherlands Government

Iceland

Singapore Government

Switzerland Government

Germany Government

Austria

Belgium

Denmark

Sweden

Spain

Norway

Latvia

Ireland

Russia

States / Provinces / Cities

Nova Scotia

Ontario

British Columbia

Alberta Canada

Quebec

Manitoba

Newfoundland and Labrador

New Brunswick

Washington state

Washington health

Utah state

Michigan state

Delaware state

Indiana state

Maryland state

Missouri state

Ohio state

Vermont state

Oregon state

Connecticut state

Rhode Island state

Idaho state

NYC health

San Francisco City

Scotland Government

Scotland Health

Wales Government

Moscow

Manchester (UK)

This post is part of a series on Coronavirus

Hearing from teams at the sharp end of governments’ coronavirus response by Tom Loosemore

Introducing the California crisis standard by Stacey Phillips

Government data: We’re all in beta now by Mike Bracken published on Sifted

The end of business as usual by Ben Terrett

What excellent digital government teams are doing right now by Andrew Greenway

Coronavirus: how Public Digital can help.

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