Digital Pandemic Response Systems: A Strategic Management Framework Against Covid-19

ABSTRACT

Governments worldwide are struggling to contain the spread of COVID-19 because many countries rely on outdated, non-digital response approaches and are thus far from exploiting the potential that digital technologies provide for pandemic response. Consequently, this study constructs a systematic approach to coordinate and manage digital pandemic response applications. To do so, the study reviews 210 peer-reviewed journal articles retrieved by querying scientific databases and searching for best-practice reports. To construct a strategic action framework, this study relies upon an organizational approach illustrating target setting and functional content in five strategic action fields. As a result, this study contributes to the current state of research by explaining how digital technology and applications may improve public pandemic response management. For practitioners, the comprehensive and action-oriented approach provides insights into the scope and the content of strategic fields of digital pandemic prevention and a roadmap to prepare digital society for pandemic outbreakes.

KEYWORDS:

• SARS-CoV-2
• digitization
• pandemic response
• public health protection
• strategic framework

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declaration of submission uniqueness

We confirm that this manuscript has not been published elsewhere and is not under consideration by another journal. All authors approved the manuscript and agreed with its submission to the “International Journal of Public Administration”.

Notes

1. EBSCO databases used for literature research: Academic Search Ultimate, Business Source Ultimate, CINAHL, eBook Academic Collection, eBook Collection, eBook Nursing Collection Trial, Econ Lit, MEDLINE, APA PsycInfo, Regional Business News, The New Republic Archive.

2. Research conducted on 06/15/2020.

3. Search terms used: “coronavirus“ + “COVID-19” + “public health” + “response” + “emergency preparation” + “pandemic”.

Additional information

Funding

This research is part of the research efforts of the federal-state project “Innovative Hochschule” and has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research [grant number FRN:03IHS041A].