Individual and institutional goodwill:
Individual and institutional goodwill enabled COG-UK to deliver on its aims and helped manage challenges related to capacity constraints over time. Altruism and scientific intrigue underpinned individual and institutional engagement and facilitated a connected network of expertise. Institutions often provided in-kind support, e.g. access to facilities and infrastructure. The ability of individuals to work flexibly and adapt to changing circumstances supported the scale and pace of delivery.
Supportive leadership, governance, and management:
Dedicated central and member-site leadership, governance and management—supported by operational and logistics functions—have been key to enabling COG-UK's activities. The representation of different stakeholders and geographies in governance groups supported a four-nations approach, alongside regular meetings of the COG-UK network. Designated management, operational and logistics support helped minimise administrative demands on research staff. Tools and processes to support the entire consortium while minimising bureaucracy (e.g. weekly reports on the percentage of samples sequenced from each nation and weekly turnaround-time reports to inform decisions about network activities) were helpful in managing the network. Policies to promote inclusiveness, accountability and transparency, such as an authorship policy listing anyone contributing to producing COG-UK data as an author on outputs, helped compensate people for time spent away from other research.
Overall productive relationships and interactions in the COG-UK network:
The commitment of individuals and institutions from diverse academic, NHS, and public health organisations across the four nations of the UK was a critical enabler. Mobilising and deepening pre-existing relationships and building new ones around a shared vision helped nurture benevolence and trust between many COG-UK collaborators and supported rapid delivery on tasks and adaptability. Investing time and effort into relationship-building addressed early scepticism about the value of pathogen sequencing for the pandemic response and helped bring policymakers on board with COG-UK's vision. Communications infrastructure, i.e. IT platforms, supported interactions between members of a distributed network.
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Challenges in matching individual and institutional capacity to demand:
Time demands placed on individuals working at an unprecedented pace, often without direct COG-UK funding, were a significant challenge. Human resource capacity constraints, e.g. the numbers and types of staff available early on, were challenging to manage given rapidly increasing demands for COG-UK sequencing and analytics.
Governance and management challenges:
Implementing the consortium's governance and management arrangements was not straightforward, since COG-UK had to navigate institutions’ diverse pre-existing rules and operating systems. Early obstacles to recruiting sufficient administrative, operational and logistics support staff led to delays in implementing some contractual arrangements and policies. These obstacles were exacerbated by COG-UK not being a legal entity.
Relational challenges in an inherently complex and diverse network:
Although rare, perceptions that power imbalances between individual PHAs occasionally influenced decision making about which samples to sequence sometimes presented a relational challenge. Some network members had different views on whether sequencing should be done centrally or locally. COG-UK developed and revised its sampling strategy over time and sought to create opportunities for partners to discuss and voice their views through various discussion forums. It took time to establish effective communications between researchers and PHAs to support the uptake of COG-UK insights in informing decision making; relations significantly strengthened as COG-UK evolved. There were some communication challenges related to the decision to move towards the gradual transition of routine sequencing from academic institutions to PHAs.
Wider political developments:
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