by Misha Belkindas
In Addis Ababa, donors pledged $5 million to support the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. This partnership could play a major role in helping countries revolutionize data production and use. But, it remains to be seen who will join the partnership, what the partnership will do, and how effective it will be.
Recently, Open Data Watch produced a report about the effectiveness of partnerships for development data. We analyzed 27 evaluations of statistical capacity building programs to find what works and what does not work to build statistical capacity. The evaluations cover a variety of partnerships over the past 15 years.
Based on common trends in the evaluations, we make three recommendations for future data partnerships:
- Strengthen statistical capacity in developing countries by providing needed financial resources and know-how.
- Improve the effectiveness and efficiency of statistical systems by making them “open,” embracing new data sources and introducing innovations.
- Harness the lessons learned from robust evaluations.
International partnerships will play a significant role in producing the data need for the post-2015 agenda. These partnerships have the opportunity to lead the way in improving how the international statistical community works. They can increase their impact by drawing on the key insights from evaluations of past data partnerships.