The world is in the midst of a pandemic and the government is issuing new and new anti-epidemic measures. To help citizens navigate what is and is not allowed, the Covid Portal is a dedicated website. The Česko.Digital community has once again come to the rescue and within 2 weeks a clear website was created that explains the measures in human language. Within 48 hours, it was visited by over 250,000 people.
Immediate response to a social problem#
The Covid Information Portal lists all current pandemic measures in an easy-to-understand format and aims to make it easier for citizens to navigate the anti-epidemic measures. On the site, people can find summaries and explanations of current measures as well as options on what they can do in different life situations. The website also includes useful links to the Ministry of Health, the Institute of Health Information and Statistics (IHIS) or important telephone contacts.
Over 100 professionals from the community of expert volunteers Česko.Digital joined the project in their spare time over the course of 14 days, including developers from the state agency NAKIT and Dominik Feri. Once the website was operational, we handed it over to the Ministry of Interior.
The project through the eyes of the team#
"The website was built and launched on the gov.cz portal within two weeks. This is super fast and all the participants proved once again how effectively the state administration can cooperate with the private sector and volunteers," says Vladimír Dzurilla, Director of NAKIT.
"The whole project was done remotely from the beginning to the end. All teams, including those from the public administration, joined our communication platform Slack, where we worked together divided into several groups according to our competences. We then met daily online in video conferences," says Radko Jiroušek, CTO of Česko.Digital. "Personally, I am very happy with how well the collaboration went. From a technological point of view, I consider it a great success that we could choose open-source technologies for this type of website, which are common on similar websites abroad. In our case we used React, Gatsby or Drupal.". _
Impact#
The pilot version of the site was launched in two weeks and was visited by over 250,000 people in its first weekend. The website is still running and is a central place to navigate the current rules and pandemic measures. Thanks to volunteers, a website that communicates government regulations in human language was delivered in record time. Within six months, 81 measures and 351 life situations affected by the pandemic were described on the site(data for March 2021). Visits to covid.portal.cz during the pandemic were roughly 10-15,000 users per day and 70,000 users per week (data for December 2020).
Media mentions#
- The Covid Information Portal has started a trial run. The website was created at Feri's instigation, with the help of volunteers (iRozhlas.cz)
- Feri bought the Covid portal from Babiš. With volunteers they created it in 14 days (Seznamzpravy.cz)
- Measures in a language that everyone understands. Volunteers from Česko.Digital created the Covid Information Portal in two weeks (CzechCrunch)
- Regulation in human language. Government and Feri launch covid portal with real life examples (iDnes.cz)
- New Covid Portal offers information on government measures, it is backed by Česko.digital and NAKIT (Lupa.cz)
- Czech volunteers launch COVID-19 information portal detailing current restrictions and more (Expats.cz)
- New Covid Portal to "Clearly Communicate, Explain Measures" Just Launched (Praguemorning.cz)
- Covid.gov.cz: New Czech information website launched (Nejbusiness.cz)
- Can I go on a date or to the slaughter? New Covid Portal answers questions about coronavirus (Pozitivnizpravy.cz)
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