New York State is ramping up efforts to combat the growing coronavirus pandemic, including appeals to all industries for help in the form of much-needed medical equipment for healthcare workers. It’s also specifically asking for help from the tech community, through an open call for contributions from individuals and organizations to help form its “COVID-19 Technology Swat Team.”
The call, posted to New York State’s official government website, seeks “impactful solutions and skilled tech employees” to help state authorities scale and grow their technology-driven response to the spread of the coronavirus. Specifically, New York state is seeking people who have professional experience in “product management, software development / engineering, hardware deployment & end-user support, data science, operations management, design, or other similar areas.”
Priority is given to any groups or teams of individuals who come from the same institution, as the effort will include assigning teams tasks with minimum 90-day “deployment” periods, and the state is obviously looking to maximize effectively by sourcing talent that already works together as a collective, thereby bypassing the process of people having to figure out how to work together.
The application form also calls out full-scale platform builds as one area of contribution, as well as freely providing access to hardware or software that can be used in tech-focused solutions. It includes options for participating either with on-site staffing, or remotely, and it’s open to both groups and individuals despite the stated preference for pre-existing groups and teams.
New York faces the most serious threat from COVID-19 in the U.S., with a total of 30,811 positive cases reported as of Wednesday morning, with 12% of those in hospitals and 3% in ICU. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been calling for support in the form of equipment from the White House and federal stockpiles, but has also said that that equipment has not been forthcoming in anywhere near the volumes needed to address the situation in the state.
TechCrunch’s audience definitely fits the profile for New York’s new call-to-action for technical expertise, so if you think you can contribute in some way, definitely consider registering your interest via their task force website.
