(ETCs – e.g., how many were open at the time, how many were eventually planned to be opened, and their locations). The result of a collaboration with the Red Cross, World Bank, Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), UNMEER and the US Humanitarian Information Unit (HIU), Ebola GeoNode is an open source geospatial platform that lets users build maps and conduct geospatial analysis on Ebola’s impacts in West Africa. Ebola GeoNode is primarily “an open data platform” designed with the intent “to make as much [data] as you can, open.80 Other platforms include(d) EbolaClinicalTrials.org and Ebola Virus Disease Data Sharing Platform Initiative. e. Informal networks for data sharing 20 The formation of informal networks of researchers, responders, and decision-makers (aid, national, and international) facilitated data sharing. “Digital humanitarians” applied big data analytics to humanitarian relief via, for example, participatory mapping, crowdsourcing translation, and real time social media communications.68 Although interviewees largely regarded organizational meetings held between May and August of 2014 as forums where participants struggled to voice concerns and little follow up action took place, they also had the effect of putting national-level researchers in contact with CDC, USAID, CIDA, DFID, WHO and non-governmental organizations. Those Guinean, Liberian, and Sierra Leonean researchers formed a core of trained personnel who worked with international partners. CDC staff members gathered additional data through professional contacts, media reports, and international authorities.18 CDC’s established relationships with these and other external partners provided a platform through which scientific knowledge and tools could be shared during the response. However, even with these relationships, the creation of policies such as data-sharing agreements took an extended period of time, sometimes much longer than anticipated. 18 Similar data sharing occurred through agencies and NGOs between May and August 2014, although by that time, many NGOs had evacuated their staffs from the countries, leaving the response to a smaller number of organizations (therefore facilitated response) but also losing the knowledge held by those NGOs. f. Updated reporting systems In Liberia, the health response was more immediate and transparent. The Ministry of Health and Social Welfare was organized so that a National Technical Management Coordinator aggregated epidemiological, surveillance, mental health, contact tracing, case management and laboratory data.69 If the national coordinator was not available, then data bottlenecked, a problem that was resolved by the appointment of an incident manager and a deputy incident manager that coordinated with large external entities like CDC.69 Liberia also reached out specifically to the U.S. National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases for assistance with the research response. Even with active outreach, however, it took NIAID a month to send a response letter detailing requirements for cooperation. In Sierra Leone, information management reportedly improved after the National Ebola Response Centre launched the Situation Room Academy, a training camp on mapping, mobile data collection and advanced Microsoft Excel. More than 600 people across 20 ministries subsequently received skills training to manage data and direct it to the correct decision-maker. Territorial-based bureaucracies facilitated data-sharing in Liberia and Sierra Leone specifically. After the NERC was formed, it established 14 district level response centres (DERCs) which called or emailed to the NERC once per day with information on the response. The data included the number of safe beds available, how many calls each had received every day to investigate a case, and how many people had died, in order to provide a safe burial. The NERC leadership then received twice-daily briefings focused on identifying and operationalizing key action points based on the day’s information, typically included officials from the government, UNMEER and other UN agencies, and governmental and nongovernmental aid agencies. In part, this was because the priority reporting chain for 21 agencies was to their own agency. Also, they were collecting data, but not necessarily the data needed for the response. The NERC convened a meeting of all agencies that were collecting data, and as a result trimmed back the key performance indicators from 160 to 41. By the end of January 2015 it had succeeded in harmonizing data collection sufficiently for a more effective response. 4. Opportunities for improving data sharing in future outbreaks of known infectious diseases: The enablers described above also provide opportunities for improving data sharing in future outbreaks involving a known pathogen without a licensed intervention, although the vaccine developed over the course of the Ebola outbreak is being used in subsequent outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Indeed, subsequent outbreaks in DRC have shown how some data sharing enablers have been used and expanded, facilitating a quick and robust response. These opportunities include template agreements with pre-negotiated terms (parties, confidentiality, intellectual property rights,