A call to strengthen data in response to COVID-19 and beyond.

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the critical need for all countries to strengthen their health data and information systems and ensure the routes the data travel, from submission to use, are unobstructed. Timely, credible, reliable and actionable data are key to ensuring that political decisions are data driven and facilitate understanding, monitoring and forecasting. To ensure that critical decisions related to the wider health and socioeconomic effects of this pandemic are data driven, each country needs to develop or enhance a national data governance plan that includes a clear coordination mechanism, well-defined and documented data processes (manual or electronic), the exchange of data, and a data culture to empower users. In addition, countries should now more than ever invest and enhance their data and health information systems to ensure that all decisions are data driven and that they are prepared for what is next. © World Health Organization, 2020.