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Sharing Datasets of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Czech Republic (Preprint)


 BACKGROUND
 At the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact of providing access to data plays a crucial role in providing the general public and media with up-to-date information. Open datasets also represent one of the means for evaluation of the pandemic on a global level.
 
 
 OBJECTIVE
 The primary aim of this paper is to describe the methodical and technical framework for publishing datasets describing basic and advanced epidemiological characteristics related to the COVID-19 epidemic in the Czech Republic, including the use of these datasets in practice.
 
 
 METHODS
 As a reaction to the epidemic situation, a new portal COVID‑19: Current Situation in the Czech Republic was developed and launched in March 2020 to provide a fully-fledged and trustworthy source of information for the public and media. The portal also contains a section for the publication of (i) public open datasets available for download in CSV and JSON formats and (ii) authorized-access-only section where the authorized persons can (through an online generated token) safely visualize or download regional datasets with aggregated data at the level of the individual municipalities and regions. The data are also provided to the local open data catalogue of the Ministry of Health and to the National Catalogue of Open Data.
 
 
 RESULTS
 The datasets have been published in various authentication regimes and widely used by general public, scientists, public authorities and decision-makers. The total number of API calls since its launch in March 2020 to 15th December 2020 exceeded 13 million. The datasets have been adopted as an official and guaranteed source for outputs of third parties, including public authorities, non-governmental organizations, scientists and online news portals.
 
 
 CONCLUSIONS
 Datasets currently published as open data meet the 3-star open data requirements, which makes them machine-readable and facilitates their further usage without restrictions. This is essential for making the data more easily understandable and usable for data consumers. In conjunction with the strategy of the MH in the field of data opening, additional datasets meeting the already implemented standards will be also released, both on COVID-19 related and unrelated topics.
