Collaboration has no limits

exactly a year ago

when india had reported its 100th covert

positive case

a user on reddit posted this to the

site’s r

india subreddit the anonymous user

described that they were preparing a

database on google sheets

to collect as much information as

possible regarding the transmission of

the coronavirus

in india i was mindlessly doomed

scrolling through my news feed

when i first discovered this post and

this one sentence really bothered me

doing this from the start of the

epidemic will be valuable data in the

future

what a weird way to spend time doing

quarantine right

but i opened the spreadsheet and it

looked fairly simple

100 of transmission data right from the

first reported case on january 30th

2020 to then present hundredth case

each row was tagged with the source

which was either a state bulletin

or a press release reporting on behalf

of medical institutions

since every transmission was recorded

adding up all the numbers gave an

up-to-date overview

of the number of people across four

different categories

confirmed with those who tested positive

active were those who were actively

carrying the virus

recovered with those who were immune to

the virus

and deceased were those who fought

really really hard

but unfortunately couldn’t make it

these calculations were automated and

stored in the second sheet

in the third sheet there was a breakdown

of these statistics

group by states and in the fourth sheet

there were instructions for newcomers to

enter new data

wait a minute so anybody on the internet

could potentially modify the contents of

the sheet

now i don’t know about you guys but this

is what i was expecting to happen to the

page in just a few hours

but i gave it a shot i read the

instructions

and there was a call for volunteers to

help with data entry

and at the bottom there was a link to

join a group chat

it was the weekend in the middle of a

worldwide quarantine

so i figured why not spare some time and

help with whatever this person was

trying to accomplish

so i hopped onto the group chat and very

quickly realized that

i wasn’t the only person who walked in

hoping to help

there were about 300 people already in

there

talking about all the different ways

each one of them could help

i noticed a pinned message at the top

summarizing the roadmap

and describing the kind of help required

to maintain this initiative for the next

coming days

i didn’t know anybody in the group and

i am pretty sure nobody knew each other

as well

but people just seemed to pick whatever

they could help with from the list

and branched out to smaller groups that

were focused on a single type of work

at that time these were data operations

and web development

in the data operations group people

volunteered to keep an eye on press

releases

from various sources and share them with

the group whenever there was an update

after verifying the source someone would

then document it on the sheet

a few others would then double check the

new entry to make sure they had gotten

it right

and the updates would then get published

similarly in the web development group

people volunteered to keep an eye on the

website source code

whenever people found bugs on the

website they would file issues

and describe what was acting weird after

figuring out a solution

someone would then update the code that

fixed the bug

a few others would then double check the

updated code to make sure they too had

gotten it right

and the changes would then be reflected

on the website

pretty straightforward right so when i

joined the kovan 19 outbreak was in its

early phase of the pandemic

the data operations group made about 10

updates every day

and i found that to be super

overwhelming the web development group

they were talking about fixing bugs and

adding new things to the website

so i dropped them a message saying hey

i could help with that over the weekend

the team came together and made a lot of

improvements to the code base

one of the things that we agreed to from

the very beginning

was to keep things as simple as possible

we knew that this was going to be a

collaborative crowdsourced effort

so we believe that using simpler tools

that a good majority of people already

knew

or perhaps could be learned easily would

make it a more inclusive space for

anybody to walk in and participate so

with this philosophy in mind

this was how the tech infrastructure

looked like

we stuck with google sheets and used it

as a primary database

anybody could easily create read

update and delete things off the

spreadsheet

yep we actually use google sheets as our

database

we redesigned the website on top of an

open source framework called react.js

that made it easier for people to create

and share interactive components without

worrying too much about how the rest of

the website worked

everyone from seasoned developers to

absolute beginners

created maps and graphs and were able to

easily plug them into the website

finally every 10 minutes a script took

snapshots of all the sheets

converted them into structured data and

published the data to this url

whenever anyone visited the website

it referred to the data present in this

url and populated the page with the

latest aggregated statistics

this helped to keep the project’s total

expenditure

to about zero rupees and allowed 300

volunteers to collaborate

without any friction in the process at

the start of the week we began to see

over 8000 people

visiting the website in just a single

day that’s

a lot of people and as much as we were

worried about scaling the tech

infrastructure

to support 300 volunteers none of us had

any previous experiences

with scaling reliability or

accountability

to the general public one trivial bug

and you could end up causing chaos at a

time when it’s crucial for

everybody to remain calm in

less than 24 hours six million people

were on the front page to keep up with

the numbers

that brought in a lot of questions on

social media like is this official

who are you guys how are you doing this

by the way

in no time a new bunch of incoming

volunteers

branched out to take care of social

media we created an account representing

the initiative

reached out to as many people as

possible and clarified with answers

since all the work done was transparent

in open source

it helped people vouch for their

credibility whenever we made mistakes

people were quick to correct us this

very quickly grew into a medium of

communications between the volunteers

and the general public they were able to

run multiple awareness campaigns

data analysis features in qa sessions

with experts

to bring a scientific and data-driven

approach to the situation

questions then turned into where can i

find a testing center in mother

what’s the curfew time in chennai i’d

like to volunteer how do i get started

social media can be incredibly volatile

when talking about a subject like

cover 19 which stands at the

intersection of health

data politics and all the emotional

uncertainties that was brought about by

the lockdown

however helplessness and vulnerability

to the crisis

drove a lot of these questions

withholding updates

only feared uncertainty fear

and even the spread of dangerous

misinformation

being transparent empathetic and

objective with their communications

significantly help people

be at ease soon many joined together

and kept us on our doors by tagging us

to press releases

and eventually many cheered us on to

keep the good work going

a couple of weeks in the energy was

still running high and many more still

joined the group

hoping to help these were some of the

things that were made possible

essentials help people find the nearest

testing

centers foot banks shelters

open supermarkets etc localization

people from different states came

together and translated the website into

these many regional languages

behind the scenes the group chat also

opened up conversations and

collaborations

between researchers journalists

economists and many more

while development had run its course and

had eventually started to ease down a

little

the real work had begun for the folks in

the data operations group

they were absolutely floored with the

rise in the number of people testing

positive

and fighting the virus to give you some

context

each of the 28 states and eight union

territories had separate channels of

communication

and reporting with varying degrees of

granularity

and structure even though the reporting

was half as hard

the team only had to record a handful of

cases to begin with

the months following may the team had

moved on from aggregating by states to

aggregating by districts

there are about 700 districts in india

and with four data points collected for

each

that’s about 2 800 data points collected

per day even though many districts and

states were unable to release all the

details

the data collected was still vast so

the team had to improvise on the fly by

re-evaluating their operations multiple

times

adapting to the changing nature of

primary sources and sometimes

even breaking the limits of google

sheets for instance

some of them even built custom big text

recognition scripts

to sift through multiple pdfs as they

came in and quickly turn them into

something they could make sense of

but at the end of the day regardless of

all the tech magic

and software gymnastics the final

entries were input by

volunteers in order to avoid any glaring

mistakes

it’s true that technology has made

collaborating with multiple people

easier than ever before however

computers don’t feel the heavy toll

it comes along with adding thousands of

rows to a spreadsheet

each roman there gave us a little

glimpse into the lives of thousands of

indians getting through this awful

pandemic

and given the grim nature of the

volunteers work

getting to some of the worst days wasn’t

easy

and i’m sure it wasn’t easy for you as

well

all of us entered a very painful period

in our country’s history

when over 50 000 people’s lives were at

stake

every day the economy was severely

tanking

people were losing their jobs and most

importantly

a lot of people were dying for some

they were friends and for some they were

family

we lost a lot of people along the way

and

that sucks but what surprises me the

most is that

people still showed up none of us in the

group had met each other before

and every interaction was online yet

there was the sense of familiarity

that brought us all together in the

midst of this very uneventful moment of

our lives

people checked in on each other across

different countries and time zones

and there existed this sense of empathy

care and selflessness things i

never would have thought this witness

happen over the spreadsheet

but it was there

row in there felt personal to each one

of us

at some point and that’s been the

invisible culture that has sustained

this initiative

for more than a year now today

marks one year since someone posted this

on the internet

hoping that doing this from the start of

this pandemic

would be valuable data in the future

throughout this journey

overnight in india.org has become a

significant source of information for

research

state governments and even the very

recently released

economic survey of india eventually

this initiative will have to stop which

is the goal

but until then we will continue to take

it

one day at a time over the last year

so many of you have helped us in so many

different ways

and we sincerely appreciate all the help

you’ve helped us believe

that collaboration has no limits