Only in government would it make sense to take a working public service and place it completely on hold while developing a new one. And that is exactly what happened this week when Suffolk County eliminated its regularly updated Covid-19 online tracking map with a vague promise of something new.
Visited thousands of times a week by citizens seeking solid facts, the county website was based on hard numbers shared with the state. It provided both top-level data, such as the total number of virus cases in Suffolk, as well as hamlet-level figures by which, for example, Montauk’s cases could be compared to the numbers in Springs. There was also key interpretive information — the rate of cases per thousand residents, a valuable indication of each community’s risk level and how fast the disease might be spreading.
We are told that the website has been shut down because it will be replaced with a new data portal, reflecting the brand-new — and very vital — contact-tracing effort that is getting up and running across New York State. But closing for renovations is not an acceptable solution during a global health crisis. Had anyone in the county thought about it from the users’ perspective, the current system might have continued while the new one was in development. Instead, visitors now see a message that the county is hopeful there will be a new Covid-19 mapping system up “as soon as possible.” This is unacceptable.
There is no excuse for an indefinite, planned outage of a critical public service. Make no mistake: In fighting the coronavirus, hard facts are the most important weapon.