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Many teams within the Office of Information Technology (OIT) have been at the forefront of the university's efforts to help keep faculty, staff and students safe using the COVID-19 Attestation Application and COVID-19 Dashboard. This special project has expanded from creation of the initial attestation app for getting people back on campus safely to now being able to provide data for a comprehensive representation of the university’s overall COVID-19 activity.

"Essentially, part of the efforts on the front end of the attestation app are directly fueling the back end of contact tracing and the dashboard efforts," says Bethany Nieman, business analyst for COVID projects. With COVID-19, “the requirements are never set, they're rapidly changing weekly."

Since the initial creation of the COVID-19 attestation app, work has continued on the stabilization and infrastructure rebuild of the app. It has expanded to include the creation of data integrations from more than nine different sources, data modeling to build out the insights and individual statistics in the platform Tableau, and from those dashboards onto the university’s websites.

A central data warehouse where all the information is consolidated and organized is being created. As requests for diverse categories of information are made, OIT is working to provide consistent data throughout the process. All types of data are kept and recorded – from attestation app information to classroom cleaning and maintenance – based on who has reported being in specific locations on campus and information pulled from the EMS room and resources scheduling system.

The data can be exported, analyzed, and monitored to help maintain healthy and safe environments on both campuses. The goal is to have a stable, reliable platform that can morph as needs related to COVID-19 activity change. Strong, quality data support provides the resources needed by the university to keep the health and safety of students, faculty and staff the highest priority and our campuses on track to help minimize potential issues related to the pandemic. Visit the COVID-19 dashboards for CU Anschutz and CU Denver to learn more about the metrics and data available.

In addition to university COVID-19 dashboards, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) launched an app that will alert smartphone owners of possible exposure to COVID-19. The Exposure Notifications System is anonymous and can be accessed from the Google Play Store on Android devices or enabled in the phone settings on the iPhone. More information about using your smartphone to help fight COVID-19 is available from CU Denver News in an interview with OIT’s David Lowry, co-interim chief information officer and director of Planning, Strategy and Analysis.

Services in the Spotlight is a series of articles highlighting teams within the Office of Information Technology. OIT has been instrumental in helping move exciting initiatives forward and impacting success for the university. For an overview of more services and resources offered by the department, watch the CU Productions video on our YouTube channel or visit our website: oit.ucdenver.edu.