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The federal government’s tardy response and relatively data-free approach to the coronavirus pandemic has one Silicon Valley CEO who specializes in Big Data steaming mad.
“The fact that we didn’t do anything in a cohesive process is where I pull my hair out,” Doug Merritt, whose software company Splunk Inc. US:SPLK helps government agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, vented to MarketWatch in a phone interview Monday. “The government’s extremely sloppy response came from a lack of data-driven decision-making. It was a total failure of leadership.”
As an expert in data analysis, Merritt is appalled that the government waited so long to act on COVID-19, and continues to fumble to this day. “We knew of the threat in late December, and had decades of plans for a pandemic,” he said. “We didn’t adequately prepare facilities and equipment for our health-care professionals.”
The missteps continue through the White House’s daily coronavirus press briefings, he said. “Why are we holding press conferences on reopening the country, with no specifics, when we should be talking about how we plan to transition back to the economy?” he asked. “There is simply no plan.”
The common denominator, he said, is a lack of data-driven decision-making in the White House due to what he calls “a tough set of circumstances”: a president not “super interested” in data and science; a lack of systems thinking within the administration to address such a complicated issue; and the general absence of experts given air time to address the problem.
Conversely, Merritt gives high marks to state and local officials in California and New York for their aggressive shelter-in-place policies based on the rapid spread of COVID-19 and limited test results, but it gnaws at him that certain data-driven initiatives were not pursued earlier on a national level.
He mentions three missed opportunities: The federal government could have called on Apple Inc. US:AAPL and Alphabet Inc.’s Google US:GOOGL US:GOOG three months ago to collect health data and other information from millions of Americans who use their smartphones; it could have earmarked $100 million to General Motors Co. US:GM to come up with a proof-of-concept assembly line for the wide-scale production of ventilators and personal protective equipment (PPE); and it should have taken early inventory of nationally available masks and PPEs.
“We work with hospitals and government agencies, so I think our government was just flat-footed in assessing the medical supply chain,” Merritt said. “We can do better than this.”
Merritt, who hosted former President Barack Obama in a chat last year on the importance of Big Data, has been among the most opinionated tech leaders in grading the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
See also: Obama weighs in on Big Data, privacy in Silicon Valley fireside chat
Microsoft Corp. US:MSFT co-founder Bill Gates, who has warned about pandemics for years, gave the U.S. response high marks for social distancing efforts but low marks for testing in an interview with NPR last week.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt criticized the federal government’s lack of a coronavirus plan during a videoconference call attended by MarketWatch last week. “There is no plan,” he said.
