Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker: Australian Subnational dataset

Australia’s COVID-19 Policy Response

Australian state and territory governments have responded differently to the challenge of COVID-19. We are tracking these responses in order to understand which policy settings work best to support Australian communities as we live with and suppress the virus.

The Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) was designed by Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government to track and compare policy responses around the world, rigorously and consistently. From early 2020, the OxCGRT has been collecting data from more than 180 countries including sub-national data for some countries. Visit ‘The Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker’ website to find out more about it.

This project extends the Blavatnik School's Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker to collect sub-national data on public policy responses within Australian states and territories.

'The Australian sub-national data is freely available on the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker's Australian GitHub repository. More data will become available during May/June 2022.

The Partnership: Oxford University and the Australian National University

The ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods is partnering with Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government to contribute sub-national Australian data to the Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker.

The ANU Team is led by Associate Professor Ben Edwards. Ben is an expert in longitudinal studies and combining large-scale surveys and linked administrative data. Roy is a current Master of Social Research student at the CSRM with a background in sociology and a particular interest in digital and political sociology.

Associate Professor Ben Edwards
OxCGRT-ANU Partnership Director

Roy Barnes
OxCGRT-ANU Partnership Project Manager

The most important members of the ANU Team are our dedicated volunteer contributors. Without you this project would not be possible.

Volunteers

Pedro Riquelme Gonzalez, Alfie Killigrew, Keliang Zang, Patrick Rehil, Weija Shein, Liza Bractendorf, Hong Zeng, Bernard Lao, Margie Morrison, Weija Shein, Chantelle Khoo, Fiona Zhong, Yintong Liu, Zixin Xu, Maeve Rolland, Dilkini Rajapaksha, Andrew Rapp, Justine Pfitzner, Ruibiao Zhu, Nada Vidyattama, Grace Lin,Zicheng Mai, Kar Chong Low, Ashraf Marasharin, Zeyu Zhang, Liz Gleeson, Niveditha Hari, Callum Rodgers, Hin Yeung Chu, Yue Zhang, Jackline Jessica Sahe, Celia Cui, Reham Aamir, Bethany Rodgers, Miao Wang, Konstantinos Tsampalas, Sher Meng Tan, Luyang Liu, Supitchaya Watakul, Marina Belaia, Yi Carlin Chen, Ruby Hynes, Lennox Hemingway, Yuyin Yao, Lily Mccrohan, Yu Wen Wong, Elinor Tsen, Nellie Thompson, Huiting Tan, Jessica Pulipaka, Suraj Ghimire, Donghan Wang, Sanjeev Sabhlok, Ruiqiao Jian, Alex Chen, Yi Zhou, Fiona Ballentine, Xinyu Shi, Rojan Joshi, Taylor Qin, Leonie Lam, Alex Qin, Reina Li, Angus Padley, Andrew Tao, Thuy An Pham, Thomas Hodgson, Alexander Trousdale, Kiara Asuzu, Haoyu Zhou, Perkins Lui, Xiuyi Zheng, Fiona Dickson, Yintong Liu, Emilianna Guerra, Pham Thao Ly Nguyen, Fuji Jauhari, Cyndekke Kwabi, Akeemat Ayinla, Rachel Choy, Siu Hei Shoshanna So, Elena Sheard, Helene Lovell, Weilun An, Jasperine Phetchareun, Jessica Liana, Ashleigh McNeil, Er Tian Sim, Sidney Chung, Xiohan Xu, Max Babus, Wenjie Xie, Yuwei Wu, Xinyi Cui, Yawen Xie, Jessica Pulipaka, Zachariah Coleman, Bernard Lao, Zhi Yuan Ho, Yun Zhu, Kethmi Gamage, Aditya Shankar

Reviewers

Suroydeep Mondal
Leonie Lam
Margie Morrison
Alfie Killigrew
Pedro Riquelme Gonzalez
Keliang Zang
Liza Bratchendorf
Weija Shen
Zhi Yuan Ho
Yun Zhu
Zac Coleman
Andrew Rapp

Check out the Blavatnik School of Government’s Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker website for information about our project partners.

OxCGRT Stringency and Policy Indices: Australia’s COVID-19 Policy Response:

OxCGRT collects publicly available information on indicators of government responses; grouped as follows

Closure and containment policies
Economic response policies
Public health policies
Miscellaneous

The data from the indicators is aggregated into a set of four common indices, reporting a number between 1 and 100 to reflect the level of government action on the topics in question:

an overall government response index (which records how the response of governments has varied over all indicators in the database, becoming stronger or weaker over the course of the outbreak).
a containment and health index (which combines ‘lockdown’ restrictions and closures with measures such as testing policy and contact tracing, short term investment in healthcare, as well investments in vaccine).
an economic support index (which records measures such as income support and debt relief).
as well as the original stringency index (which records the strictness of ‘lockdown style’ policies that primarily restrict people’s behaviour).

Note that these indices simply record the number and strictness of government policies, and should not be interpreted as ‘scoring’ the appropriateness or effectiveness of a country’s response. A higher position in an index does not necessarily mean that a country's response is ‘better’ than others lower on the index.

For more detail and the most up to date information about the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker’s indicators and indices visit the project GitHub repository. The Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker codebook and interpretation guides provide detailed information about the data being collected and indices calculated.

Project Contacts

Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government:

For enquiries (including media enquiries) about the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker please see the contacts listed at www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/covidtracker.