Rebekah Jones, Fired Florida Department of Health manager to make public announcement

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FLORIDA TODAY’s Isadora Rangel talks to investigations reporter Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon about the termination of Florida’s COVID-19 data chief.

Florida Today

Rebekah Jones, removed from her role managing Florida’s COVID-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard on May 5, and fired on Thursday, has now decided to speak out publicly for the first time since and released emails from her superiors showing that they had asked her to remove access to data and at one point requested to take the entire dashboard offline.

Jones, who was a Geographic Information Systems manager for the Florida Department of Health, entered the national spotlight after FLORIDA TODAY revealed in an email she had sent out informing researchers and other data users that she had been removed from her role managing the state’s popular and acclaimed COVID-19 data portal.

“As a word of caution, I would not expect the new team to continue the same level of accessibility and transparency that I made central to the process during the first two months. After all, my commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it,” she wrote. 

In emails reported by CBS-12 in West Palm Beach, Jones further alleged that she was fired for refusing to “manually change data” to favor the reopening plan.

Jones was given the chance to resign by 5 p.m. Thursday or face dismissal.

She did not resign, she said in emailed messages to FLORIDA TODAY on Friday evening, and provided for the first time details about efforts of her superiors to keep data from the public to support Gov. Ron DeSantis plans to re-open the state.

“Shamarial Roberson, Deputy Secretary of Health, asked me to manipulate the data to mislead the public to support reopening mostly rural counties after the preliminary plan was already drafted and about to be presented,” she told FLORIDA TODAY in an email. 

Jones said this incident only involved Roberson and occurred in the last weekend of April. 

In an emailed statement through a Health Department Spokesman, Deputy Health Secretary Shamarial Roberson, a doctor of Public Health denied that any manipulation had occurred.

“It is patently false to say that the Department of Health has manipulated any data,” Roberson said. 

But Jones said she kept records and copies of emails when it happened “because I knew it was wrong,” she wrote. 

Jones said what Roberson wanted her to do involved “manually editing and changing data.” She said she was prepared to provide evidence she told people of the incident and “wanted to quit my job because of it, and started asking people about jobs when it happened.”

In other emails she released to FLORIDA TODAY on Friday — the authenticity of which could not immediately be established — Jones revealed a chain of instructions that began on May 4 clearly telling her to not just revoke access to certain data, as reported, but to take down the whole site, because it provided access to the data.

“This whole site needs to come down,” wrote Scott Pritchard. “It literally has all the data files.”

Pritchard is the Interim Director of Infectious Disease Prevention and Investigations Section in the Bureau of Epidemiology’s Division of Disease Control and Health Protection at the Department of Health.

Jones also provided more context to emails reported by the Tampa Bay Times and South Florida SunSentinel in which she pushed back on a command to revoke access to data on the dashboard. FLORIDA TODAY obtained those emails now independently from Ms. Jones as well. That data was for a moment taken down, before being reinstated. 

“Shamarial Roberson did not understand how the dashboard nor how APIs work, and did not want the public to see non resident data nor the event date data, which the Miami Herald had confronted her and Scott Pritchard about earlier that day,” Jones wrote. 

API stands for application programming interface, a set of functions that allow data to be accessed.

Registering her disapproval in an email to IT Director Craig Curry she wrote “I’m not pulling our primary resource for coronavirus data because he wants to stick it to journalists.”

Jones clarified that “he” refers to Pritchard.  

“I pushed back against altering and deleting data, and removing the capability of the public to see the data themselves because it went against the very transparency that had made my dashboard a success and trusted resource,” she wrote.

“Because I created and managed the dashboard by myself, I was the only person who could alter it or the data behind it, so they had to go come to me with requests to make changes.”

Earlier this week Gov. Ron DeSantis said her removal and allegations were a “non-issue.” Jones’ character and credentials also came under fire as a criminal charge she is facing related to her personal life was noted by the governor.

A spokesman for the governor in previous statements said Jones was fired for repeated insubordination and for being “disruptive.”

Jones said she will be making a public statement at 9 p.m. EST Friday. It was not clear in what format this would be, but implied it would be on television. 

The remainder of Jones’ claims or questions about why Pritchard wanted the site down weren’t addressed.

Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon is a watchdog reporter for FLORIDA TODAY. Contact him at 321-355-8144, or [email protected]. Twitter: @alemzs

Read or Share this story: https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/2020/05/22/rebekah-jones-fired-florida-department-health-manager-make-public-announcement/5247836002/

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