Context

South African businesses, industry associations, civil society organisations and individuals are – alongside government – responding to the COVID-19 (CV19) pandemic in multiple ways.

Significant donations, innovative funding mechanisms, collaborative work streams and the procurement of much needed goods and services to stave off the spread of the virus are emerging rapidly, convened and guided by BSA and other organisations. There is however no single public repository of this immense response.

While the voluntary nature and sheer quantum of these responses is testament to the heart and resilience of business and civil society, there is a risk of misdirected funding, lack of co-ordination and duplication of efforts in the fight against CV19. The lack of public visibility risks compounding the mistrusting effects of the past. 

Solution

The C19 Business Reponses Dashboard (BRD) is a real-time tactical visibility tool that links and aligns the emerging responses of business, industry associations and civil society.

Decision-makers, funders and implementers are able to view their current and proposed strategies and efforts in context of the broader business and civil society response to CV19 in order to ascertain where and how best to direct their efforts. 

The bird’s eye view linking of funding, strategies and projects in the BRD provides the analytical capability to optimally target and streamline response strategies of individual actors while at the same time supporting the collaboration required to amplify efforts across sectoral and geographical lines. Key outcomes are then maximising impact of curbing the spread while minimizing the risk of misalignment and duplication of efforts. 

Tool

The BRD is a visualisation and analytics tool hosted on a publicly accessible web interface that will provide tactical visibility of 3 categories of data that are currently not available in a single-source:

1. Current global and local infections data
2. Emerging collaborative efforts at national level
3. Association membership dashboard that show how members are collective responding
4. Individual business specific strategies and projects*

The BRD is in proof of concept phase and represents DBK Advisory’s desire to support the business response to CV19. Significant and rapid development of the BRD is required to ramp up availability and visualisation of key data. Partners are invited to support the BRD project.

*This level of data is only available to businesses who opt-in

Global and Local Infections Data & Analysis

The business responses to CV19 is rooted in the way in which global and local infections data are unfolding in the face of government efforts.

This BRD view will provide up-to-date testing, infections, death and recovery data from global and local perspectives in order to provide visibility of how the virus is spreading, where hotspots are in relation to vulnerable populations and key scientific analysis pertinent to informing a coherent business and civil society response. The data will be gleaned from leading publicly available sources.

National Collaborative Efforts

There is a proliferation of responses to the CV19 pandemic in South Africa. This view in the BRD tracks and links the donations, funding, mechanisms, workstreams, projects and key players that are responding to CV19. In the context of local infections data, this dashboard tracks the donations; lists the collaborative efforts and their workstreams; and visualizes the implementation of projects geographically.

Currently this data is disparate but partners and more consolidated input will see the visibility improve.

Association Membership Responses

Businesses are coming together in new ways to respond to COVID-19, especially through the platforms provided by industry associations and membership bodies.

This view in the BRD will visualise the collective response of an association’s membership in the context of the National Collaborative Response, highlighting how the collective manoeuvring by industry associations are directing resources.

Business Specific Responses

No business is spared the socio-economic impacts of CV19 and the lockdown. As such each business is focusing on continuity plans, but larger businesses have a duty of care given the role they play in supporting the economy and local communities.

This view in the BRD is business-specific in mapping out and tracking the strategies focused on internal business continuity, employee health and effectiveness, host/fenceline community responses, supply chain support and their broader efforts to support the national response and recovery. This dashboard will not be accessible by the public, but only to the leadership and crisis response teams of businesses that opt-in.