On his first full day in office, President Joe Biden began implementation of his administration’s COVID-19 plan, which includes major pushes to collect and release more data on the pandemic and help non-federal entities get better technology to bolster their response.
The COVID-19 plan—established through a set of 10 executive orders—has seven stated goals designed to get the pandemic under control and protect the broadest, most equitable number of Americans. While the use of technology is not mentioned among those goals, the meat of the proposal includes a heavy reliance on data and efforts to improve data collection.
This is apparent from the first goal: Restore trust with the American People.
“The federal government should be the source of truth for the public to get clear, accessible and scientifically accurate information about COVID-19,” according to an executive summary of the strategy released Thursday, which calls out the need to rely on science. The orders were expected to be signed by Biden Thursday afternoon.
A pillar of the plan is to use metrics to better understand how the virus is spreading, where it is under control and what actions should be taken at the federal and local levels at any given time. To make this exercise valid, the administration will need to collect a lot of data.
An executive order on “Ensuring a Data-Driven Response to COVID-19 and Future High Consequence Public Health Threats” focuses on “federal agencies’ collection, production sharing and analysis of, and collaboration with respect to, data to support an equitable COVID-19 response and recovery,” the summary states. That will include using data for a more concerted vaccine rollout and to inform public health policies, such as in public buildings—like schools—and transportation—including private transportation like ..
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