Norsk Koronamonitor

Norway locked down on March 12, 2020. Opinion AS needed population-level survey data immediately — to understand how Norwegians were responding to the pandemic, what they were doing, and how attitudes were shifting in real time.

Traditional survey methods were too slow. An automated phone survey system could reach a representative sample without human operators and produce daily data from day one.

An automated phone dialing system using IVR (Interactive Voice Response) with DTMF touch-tone input. No human operators needed. The system called respondents, played recorded questions, captured keypad responses, and stored results — fully automated from end to end.

The entire system — dialing, recording, response capture, data pipeline, and reporting — was built and deployed in 3 days. It ran continuously for years after launch, producing daily survey data on Norwegian attitudes throughout the pandemic.

The constraint sharpened the scope. There was no time for over-engineering — every decision had to serve the goal of getting reliable data flowing within 72 hours. The architecture was simple enough to be understood, debugged, and operated by one person under pressure.