Open Letter to St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann

I have just sent the following email to our County Executive (and others), in the hopes of beginning a conversation around how the County might improve the sharing of Covid-19 data with concerned residents. I am hopeful that there can be some enhancements and improvements in how the data is shared.

Subject: Request for Additional Data Transparency/Availability

Mr. Ehlmann,

I have been a resident of St. Charles County for 33 years and am incredibly proud to call it home for me, my wife and our 4 children. I value the service that you and your colleagues have provided during that time to the over 400,000 residents under your charge and I thank you for all of your many efforts to make St. Charles County such a wonderful place.

I am writing to you today to request additional information and data resources around Covid-19 in St. Charles County. I have been following closely the disease in our County since the first case was announced in March and have been manually tracking the numbers on a daily basis. The Covid-19 dashboard that was released is helpful and provides some insight into the numbers, but I desire and wish for some additional insight. I wish to begin a discussion around how the County might share the underlying data tables to the residents, empowering them to perform analysis and make the graphs that they find valuable. I understand that many people are not as into data as I am, but I believe that there is value in being as transparent as possible with the citizens. I understand that there are possible HIPAA concerns and other legalities that must be considered, but I was hoping to see if it might be possible to even just start by sharing the data that drives the current dashboard.

At the moment, you can see the number of Total Deaths, but you cannot see the day to day # of deaths in a table. You can see the numbers broken out by each Zip Code if you click on that portion of the map, but you cannot find the Zip Code level data in a table. You can filter and see all of the data by gender or race, but none of that data is available in a table. This lack of tabular data has led to an inability to do any type of detailed analysis of trends and impacted populations. 

Currently, I am creating and tracking the Estimated Active Cases, as that number is more meaningful than the much reported Cumulative Totals. I use this calculated value to determine what the 7 and 14 day trend is for Cases the County, which many people have found useful. I have attached today's graph of the Active Cases for reference. (Additional graphs can be found here, if desired.)

I understand that this has been an unforeseen global event, and I do appreciate the data that the County has made available. However, I do believe that we can work to make the data even more transparent and available for residents who, like myself, might find more data availability a great thing.

I welcome any comments, suggestions and discussion, as I hope to improve what our wonderful County has already put in place. Thank you again for your time and for your service.

Respectfully,
Jeremy Walker

CC:
Doug Bolnick - Director Public information Officer
Mary Enger - Director, Communications
Matthew Seeds - Director, Information Systems