Technological advancements and big data have brought many improvements to smart city infrastructure. During the COVID-19 outbreak, smart city technologies were considered one of the most effective means of fighting the pandemic. The use of technology, however, implies collecting, processing personal data, and making the collected data publicly available which may violate privacy. While some countries were able to freely use these technologies to fight the pandemic, many others were restricted by their privacy protection legislation. The literature suggests looking for an approach that will allow the effective use of smart city technologies during the pandemic, while complying with strict privacy protection legislation. This article explores the approach applied in Moscow, Russia, and demonstrates the existence of a hybrid model that might be considered a suitable tradeoff between personal privacy and public health. This study contributes to the literature on the role of smart city technologies during pandemics and other emergencies.
This paper explores whether inequities in access to COVID-19 vaccines can be attributed to governance deficits, particularly for developing and emerging countries where poor governance is widespread, but also for developed countries, where governments' performance fell short of expectations. These shared performance deficits beg questions about the impact of governance quality as well as the interplay of ethics in governance when life-or-death decisions must be made. It also explores the impact of COVID-19 on development, especially in the areas of poverty and employment. The findings of the paper show that there is a positive correlation between vaccine equity and good governance, meaning that countries with higher scores in governance rankings have more access to vaccines and have vaccinated most of their populations. Similarly, countries with relatively lower scores in governance rankings have poor access to and distribution of vaccines and have only covered a limited number of their people. The paper further points to disastrous societal impacts of COVID-19 vaccine inequity on poverty and employment, which have hindered global development.
How people make initial and collective sense under crises remains unanswered. This paper addresses this question using the control of COVID-19 in Vietnam as a case study. Our results suggest that sensemaking under crises is influenced by an institutional propensity for prevention that has developed gradually over time. Local governments play a vital role in fostering collective sensemaking which enables concerted actions in epidemic control. However, biases are inherent in sensemaking, including a delay in access to vaccine and a violation of privacy. For policy makers, this study suggests that developing specific prevention policies and programs, building large-scale coordination capacity, and promoting local initiatives are necessary for coping with epidemics. For theory development, the study explores how institutions condition sensemaking and specifies several mechanisms in which local authorities could facilitate collective sensemaking in crises.