COVID Law Lab

Project

A single repository was needed to gather and share legal documents from all over the world. Collaboration needed to be coordinated between several major institutions including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.

Source Code

Team

I was the sole designer and developer supporting public policy lawyers, law students, and healthcare professionals.

Process

My role in the project was to setup a back-end that could be updated by staff and interns with minimal effort as well as be a collection point for public contributions. To accomplish this, I set up an instance of WordPress using custom post types and fields, and established custom user types. A map was created to link data complied by the team with real-time data from the WHO API.

Outcomes

“[The] COVID-19 Law Lab is an important tool for sharing good practices on laws and policies.”

The COVID-19 Law Lab database is now publicly available, providing an important resource for research and allowing policymakers, academics, and civil society to gain knowledge across jurisdictions that can help countries strengthen legal frameworks to respond effectively to future disease outbreaks. It was accessed by approximately 70,000 visitors in 2021.