Data Silos Hurt Our Covid Response

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the world. Many refer to the pandemic as an unforeseeable event, a black swan that could not be planned for. We wish to agree and to disagree with such sentiments. While the specifics of the virus could not have been expected, it was clear that many situations such as plagues, wildfires, earthquakes, and more do not respect organizational boundaries yet we continue to build data networks that do.
The siloed nature of our data networks makes it difficult for data to flow across organizational structures and that makes it impossible use data for situational awareness. Our unpreparedness made assessment and communications much more difficult than it should have been and that in turn hindered our ability to respond.
We do not need another application and we do not need a new detection system, we need a new way to think about data networks!