Digital Resilience to Covid-19: A Model for National Digital Health Systems to Bounce Forward From the Shock of a Global Pandemic

Abstract: COVID-19 represented a major shock to global health systems, not the least to resource-challenged regions in the Global South. We report on a case of digital, information system resilience in the response to data needs from the COVID-19 pandemic in two countries in the Global South. In contrast to dominant perspectives where digital resilience enables bounce back or maintenance of a status quo, we identify five bounce forward resilience preconditions (i) distributed training, (ii) local expertise (iii) local autonomy and ownership (iv) local infrastructure and (v) platform design infrastructure. These preconditions enable an elevated degree of resilience that in the face of an external shock such as COVID-19 can deliver a bounce forward or strengthening of the information system beyond its pre-shock state.