Helping Government Respond to COVID-19

Nick Sinai | March 18, 2020| 1 min. read

This is an unprecedented time — when government action is most needed.

Having served in the White House during superstorm Sandy and the Ebola crisis, I’ve seen firsthand why a whole-of-government approach is critically important.

Insight companies (current and former) obviously want to help our public servants and our federal, state, and local government agencies however they can.

Here’s what they are doing:

Smartsheet, the platform for enterprise achievement, announced that governments and agencies responding to the COVID-19 crisis can use the company’s government-specific instance of Smartsheet, Smartsheet Gov, free of charge and without obligation. Several agencies have already tapped the capabilities of Smartsheet Gov to help them plan, track, and collaborate on their COVID-19 responses. The company also released a set of free templates for any organization modeled after assets Smartsheet built internally that can be used to create a COVID-19 operations dashboard. The dashboard serves as an information hub and resource center for employees and can help any organization understand and assess risks and collect data on needs or health changes in their population.
Yext, a search experience company, is volunteering its services to help governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) build a COVID-19 Answers Hub to answer the public’s questions about symptoms, essential job openings, testing centers, executive orders, CDC FAQs, and much more, in one place. They can create a new website or add experiences to existing sites. See an example of what they built for New Jersey in just 4 business days at covid19.nj.gov. Learn more at https://covid19-gov.yext.com/
Hootsuite, a social media management company (including crisis communications), is launching free advanced online workshops on managing complex issues on social — especially relevant for healthcare and government organizations dealing with the COVID-19 response. Hootsuite is also offering free access to its Professional plan until July 1st, 2020, to help small businesses and nonprofits stay connected to their customers and audiences.
Pluralsight, a tech skills and insights platform, released a free guide and courses on remote work and leading remote teams. Pluralsight is also offering their conferences experiences for free, so organizers can host their conference content on Pluralsight free of charge. Pluralsight One, with over 350+ courses for high school computer science teachers and students, is also being offered for free for a year via Code.org or Pluralsight One.
CoreView, a SaaS management platform, announced that it is offering free usage of its CoreLearning and CoreAdoption products for Microsoft Teams through September 2020 to help businesses and government agencies educate remote workers on how to effectively engage with and leverage Teams. CoreLearning and CoreAdoption expand employees’ knowledge and aptitude of Microsoft Teams and prevent help desks from being flooded with inbound requests on basic “how-to” questions during an indeterminate remote work timeline. IT leaders interested in this offer can sign up through CoreView’s free tool, CoreDiscovery, which hosts the learning and adoption solutions.
Qualtrics, an experience management platform, is making a set of Experience Management (XM) tools free and publicly available for all organizations, including companies, communities, and governments.
Alteryx, a self-service data science and analytics company, is offering free analytics support services for healthcare providers dealing with the COVID-19 response and will also be offering free 90-day work-from-home license keys for current licensees of Alteryx Designer (customers are being contacted on a priority basis). Alteryx is also standing up a Virtual Solution Center on Alteryx Community for all users — including those in the government and healthcare — to get real-time help with workflows, use cases, and access to other resources they need. Alteryx is also hosting industry-specific forums for government and healthcare data workers to discuss data challenges arising from COVID-19, as well as relevant use cases that can help participants meet these challenges. And, as always, nonprofits and students can get free Alteryx licenses through Alteryx For Good.
Nearpod, a K-12 digital instructional platform, is providing a set of resources for school districts creating online lesson plans and managing school closures.
Tricentis, the leader in software test automation, is offering its load testing platform free of charge until April 30, 2020 for any government agency, non-government organization, and non-profit.
Diligent, a modern governance software company, is offering free access to Community by Diligent for K-12 public school districts to help school boards during this time. Learn more about the benefits of Community, here.
Tenable, a cyber exposure and vulnerability management company that serves local, state, and national governments around the globe, is providing resources to help customers manage the new reality — and associated cyber risks — of a large remote workforce virtually overnight. Tenable is immediately extending Tenable.io licenses through April 30. For Tenable.sc and Nessus Professional customers, the company is offering a free Tenable.io license with unlimited agent scanning for 30 days. In either case, Tenable will help customers rapidly deploy agents across remote workers’ personal assets and manage these devices as part of your Tenable deployment. (Please contact your customer success manager to learn more and get started.) In addition, Tenable will also be providing free weekly sessions with principal engineers via Zoom — these sessions will include tips on how to set up agent scanning on remote assets, deployment best practices and a 30-minute Q&A session with our specialists to help address specific queries. Here’s more information.
E2open, the largest cloud-based supplier of supply chain and logistics software in the world, is offering its Critical Goods Allocation platform (and support services) pro-bono to federal and state agencies responding to Covid-19. The platform provides the ability to quickly connect to state and local systems including spreadsheet-based systems to have complete visibility of supply and demand for critical supplies. The platform can provide one place where critical allocation decisions can be made centrally at the state or federal level — essentially a central clearinghouse to see where supply is and where demand is most needed and to make decisions on where to allocate critical supplies. Working with Gates Foundation, the platform was been adapted for health care use in Africa; the first instance domestically is being stood up for the State of Texas and is expected to be running by Monday, March 30th. E2Open could get the platform set up for federal or state agencies in 24–48 hours.