It's important, however, to draw a firm distinction between the collection of headline data, such as infection rates, hospitalisations, etc and the insight that can be revealed by analysing that data quickly and accurately.

For Suffolk County Council, moving from data to insight for a population of around 750,000 people required a rapid and innovative change in approach. As Rebecca Allen Head of C-19 Analytics, Knowledge & Intelligence, at Suffolk County Council explained, at the time, the information and communication capabilities of many local authority public health teams were not suited to the volume and complexity of data which now needed to be processed.

"In common with colleagues across the country, as the pandemic took hold, we were reliant on Excel-based data sets as the basis for data collection and analysis," she said. "Given the crisis situation, this presented us with a range of challenges, not least because it seriously impacted our ability to turn data into decisions."

Using this data to create a high-level dashboard, the Suffolk team were faced with the need to carry out ongoing and intensive manual upkeep to ensure datasets and the dashboard outputs remained accurate.