Engineering Data Assets for Public Health Applications: A Covid-19 Case Study

When the global pandemic struck in 2020, most countries established task forces to meet a challenge that impacted governmental resources. It became apparent that data, intelligence gathering, and both modelling and predictive capabilities were required. While artificial intelligence (AI) based solutions had already begun to emerge within the public sector, the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated this process. In particular, modelling of case numbers with the development of predictive algorithms. The development of AI solutions for public sector organizations is inherently multidisciplinary. This is crucial to understanding how solutions can be developed, outputs understood, and the benefits and risks measured. Furthermore, the development of AI solutions often requires data which may not be accessible from a single location. In the case of Covid-19 modelling, data must be extracted from multiple locations to construct data assets. In this research, a collaborative approach to developing machine learning expertise for the public sector is presented. Using Covid-19 as a case study, the role of different government sectors when building data assets is examined along with the use of standard data models, and how this type of cooperation led to the development of a pipeline for data assets to underpin AI solutions for the public sector.