Data
Data in Development

The Future of Development Includes a Data Revolution, UN Panel Says

Burgess COMMENTARY
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PeterBurgess • a few seconds ago
I suppose I should be encouraged by this report, but in fact I am merely irritated. Some of the conversations about using data in support socio-economic development that are going on now are repeats of conversations that took place 20 years ago and more. The problem is that senior leadership is willing to talk about these things, but wants to shut them down when the data show some of the reality about abysmal performance and deep levels of self serving behavior. I went through this over and over again in connection with World Bank projects, UNDP projects and projects of various other Official Development Assistance (ODA) organizations over a period of many years. Hardly anything that goes on in the ODA space has a strong management structure and accountability is the pits!
Peter Burgess TrueValueMetrics

The Future of Development Includes a Data Revolution, UN Panel Says

British PM David Cameron, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. United Nations/Twitter

Grassroots data collection should play an increasing role to meet global development goals, according to a recently released United Nations report.

The report by the UN High Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda emphasizes the need to use technology to collect up-to-date data on a national and international level to aid the tracking of advances, the integration of evidence into future decisions and increased transparency. SciDevNet reported on the release.

The heads of the panel were British Prime Minister David Cameron, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and also included other politicians, heads of state and development experts including John Podesta, chair of the Center for American progress and Horst Köhler, former president of Germany.

'Data are not sexy, but the High Level Panel understands that, on the ground, they are essential,' Molly Elgin-Cossart, chief of staff at the Center on International Cooperation, which helped the draft the report, told SciDevNet. 'There was a lot of discussion on how to better connect grassroots data collection with national efforts via crowdsourcing and new technology.'

The report, which was presented to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, sets the stage for establishing a development roadmap after the 2015 Millennium Development Goals, according to the article.

In its report, the panel recommends setting up a Global Partnership on Development Data that would bring together government statistical offices, international organizations, civil society groups, foundations and the private sector to develop a global strategy to address gaps in development data, expand data accessibility and gather international support to establish baseline post-2015 targets by January 2016. 'A true data revolution would draw on existing and new sources of data to fully integrate statistics into decision making, promote open access to, and use of, data and ensure increased support for statistical systems,' the report says, also emphasizing the important role of data in aiding government decision-making and accountability.

In response to a question by SciDevNet, Elgin-Cossar explained that the report was lighter on technical and scientific details in order to be more persuasive to policy makers, and that implementing scientific ideas and data collection would be easier once the political will exists.