ABSTRACT
COVID-19 has wreaked unprecedented havoc in the world. Response efforts have also made huge evident gaps in preparedness and governments around the world's capacity to respond to a health crisis of this magnitude adequately. As a result, local communities have taken matters into their own hands and turned to technology platforms to coordinate mutual aid efforts, shed light on response gaps, and hold governments accountable. This paper explores the role of open data sharing platforms and collective intelligence in COVID-19 response efforts by studying two examples of community-led initiatives from Spain and Japan. Frena La Curva (Spain) and Safecast (Japan) utilized the Ushahidi platform, an open-source technology tool born out of Kenya's post-election violence that has been widely used in over 160 countries for crisis response since its inception in 2008. Research reports have been warning of pandemic breakouts for decades. However, the response to COVID-19 was inadequate, with healthcare systems buckling under the pressure of the spread of the disease. Moreover, existing social protection programs could not shield citizens despite having experienced similar economic impacts in the years that have passed. Data hugging and suppression of information regarding the pandemic outbreak led to significant delays in measures being put in place to curb the spread of COVID-19. This paper proposes that governments would benefit from leveraging open data and technology platforms to engage with ordinary citizens and eliminate data blind spots in the design of social protection programs. It also posits that we need to invest in interoperable data exchange systems to increase the speed of response and learning. Finally, it also proposes the need for internet freedom and access as a critical tool for preparedness by enabling the free flow of information. © 2022 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).