April and early May saw many signficant developments for the Data Revolution. The Sustainable Development Solutions Network released a report estimating the cost of the data revolution; African countries produced a data consensus; PARIS21 provided a roadmap for the data revolution; ODI published a study on millions of people being uncounted; the Cartagena Data Festival took place; and other reports and blogs discussed the data revolution. We provide links to reports, articles, and blog posts below. If we have missed something, please contact us.
6 May 2015
Jeffrey Sachs writes an op-ed on Project Syndicate about data for development. The article cites the SDSN needs assessment report. He argues that groups should promote data for four purposes: 1) Service delivery; 2) Public management; 3) Accountability and business; 4) Enabling the public to know whether or not a global target has been achieved…(more)
6 May 2015
Kristen Stelljes writes Life After the Cartagena Data Festival — We’ll Never Be the Same on Post2015.org. Her post discusses the main themes of the conference and suggests that a World Forum on Sustainable Development Data should be formed to: 1) Make the tent even bigger; 2) Tackle real challenges; 3) Make commitments; 4) Celebrate achievements; 5) Stay connected.…(more)
5 May 2015
Davis Adieno of Development Initiatives writes about working with stakeholders to test ideas of the data revolution in Kenya.…(more)
5 May 2015
Julia Keseru posts on the Sunlight Foundation blog about a new report titled The Social Impact of Open Data. The report assesses the impact of more than 100 cases of governments opening their data.…(more)
5 May 2015
Alex Fischer writes a blog post for the New Security Beat titled Measuring the SDGs: Investments in Mapping, Geospatial Data Collection Critical to Success. The article notes that the SDSN needs assessment report estimates that roughly a quarter of the SDGs require geospatial data. The post describes the efforts needed to develop geospatial data for the SDGs.…(more)
1 May 2015
Claire Melamed writes on the Development Progress blog about the Cartagena Data Festival. She says the event gathered academics, government officials, civil society groups, international donors, private sector representatives, and journalists together to address data quality and availability for better development outcomes.…(more)
1 May 2015
Rachel Quint writes a blog for Post2015.org about the African Data Consensus. The post highlights four takeaways from the meetings for the African Data Consensus: 1) The African Data Consensus is revolutionary in its framing of the Data Revolution for better decision-making and better development outcomes; 2) Demand-driven data is a major priority; 3) The role of National Statistical offices (NSOs) is a complicated and political issue, and there are significant opportunities for development if they can modernize; 4) The Data Revolution should (and can) be led from the Global South.…(more)
30 April 2015
AidData publishes a report titled Marketplace of Ideas for Policy Change. The report is a survey of 6,750 policymakers in 126 countries on what influences policy change. The report notes that the World Bank’s Bulletin Board for Statistical Capacity Building is particularly influential. The authors find this is “noteworthy in light of recent calls for a data revolution to support the post-2015 sustainable development goals.”.…(more)
30 April 2015
Eric Swanson (ODW) and Rebecca Furst-Nichols (Data2x) publish a blog post titled Data Disaggregation: Like the Layers of a Pyramid. The post suggests that providing gender-disaggregated data should follow the shape of a pyramid with the census and CRVS at the base.…(more)
30 April 2015
Sarah Lucas writes a blog for Post2015.org titled April 2015: Five Headlines from a Big Month for the Data Revolution. The post highlights five April 2015 Data Revolutions Headlines related to the Africa Data Consensus, the SDSN needs assessment report, the ODI’s Missing Millions report, PARIS21’s Roadmap, and the Cartagena Data Festival.…(more)
30 April 2015
Alan Stanley post a blog for the Institute of Development Studies about the data revolution and the Cartagena Data Festival. The article discusses the challenges of getting data to be used equally around the world.…(more)
29 April 2015
The UN ESCAP publishes a Draft Discussion Paper on the Asia-Pacific High-Level Consultation on Financing for Development. The paper draws on the SDSN report estimating the costs of monitoring the SDGs and produces parallel estimates for Asia and the Pacific…(more)
28 April 2015
Jenna Slotin publishes a blog post on the UN Foundation website. The post mentions the need for international development to harness the power of the information age in preparation for the post-2015 agenda. Better data will lead to better outcomes.
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28 April 2015
Pippa Norris publishes an article in The Washington Post about the possibility of using public opinion polls to track the SDGs. While traditional official statistics will always be necessary, good surveys such as the World Values Survey can help contribute to the data revolution.…(more)
27 April 2015
PassBlue publishes an article by Maurizio Guerrero about the data revolution and the SDGs. The report focuses on big data and the interaction of private and public data users for development.…(more)
27 April 2015
Suchit Leesa-Nguansuk writes an article in the Bangkok Post about an effort by the ICT Ministry of Thailand to make access to open government data a constitutional right.…(more)
25 April 2015
Morten Jerven posts a blog post titled A Reading List for the Data Revolution. The blog post highlights several books about the (mis)use of statistics everywhere from Apartheid South Africa to 1930s Germany. He also recommends books on the risks of a technical, expert-centered view of international development.…(more)
24 April 2015
Jamison Crowell and Ryan Flynn post a blog for the International Budget Partnership about open budgets and the data revolution. The post argues that budget numbers are not enough: governments need to provide descriptions of why a budget is divided the way it is. While governments have rich data on budgets, these data are rarely made public.…(more)
24 April 2015
Amy VanderZanden published an article for Humanosphere about problems in gender data. The article discusses the recently released report No Celings: The Full Participation Report which looks at gender inequality statistics. One of the key points of the report is that gender data need considerable improvements.…(more)
23 April 2015
Devex publishes an article by Kelli Rogers titled Traditional vs. citizen-generated data: Is it a case of either-or? The post discusses the ongoing conversations about the role of big data and official statistics in international development.…(more)
23 April 2015
Devex publishes a YouTube video about the Cartagena Data Festival. The video discusses a number of issues related to the data revolution, such as big data, official statistics, citizen engagement, and other issues.…(more)
22 April 2015
Alicia Philips Mandaville writes a blog post for Post2015.org titled What Gwyneth Paltrow can teach us about the data revolution. The post describes the failed efforts of Gwyneth Paltrow to live on the $29 per week allocated for SNAP welfare benefits in the US. Paltrow failed because she was unwilling to change the types of food she bought. Similarly, people interested in data in developing countries need to adjust their data preferences to match local circumstances.…(more)
21 April 2015
Morten Jerven publishes a blog post titled What did we learn from measuring the costs of monitoring the SDGs? He discusses the UN SDSN needs assessment report and provides 5 lessons: 1) The [budget] numbers are soft. Very soft. 2) Annual disaggregated statistics on all indicators are not feasible. 3) Want open data? Start with the costs of data. 4) The bottleneck is not funding, but capacity. 5) Looking like a donor versus looking like a state. We note that the principle author the report, Jessica Espey, provides some clarifying points in the comments section.…(more)
21 April 2015
Tom Berliner writes a blog post for Development Progress about Myanmar’s first census in 30 years. The post discusses the obstacles faced including a pencil shortage, a truckload of documents catching fire, difficulty of reaching remote communities, and ethnic tensions and conflict zones. The blog notes that the data revolution is about far more than mobile phones and big data.…(more)
21 April 2015
Ricardo Fuentes-Nieva writes a blog post for Oxfam titled Is a data revolution under way, and if so, who will benefit? The post discusses the ODI report on the missing millions and the data revolution. The post suggests that while the data revolution can’t and won’t solve all development problems, it can solve some problems.…(more)
20 April 2015
PARIS21 publishes A Road Map for a Country-led Data Revolution. The report touches on opportunities and challenges for the data revolution. It discusses three big ideas: 1) Increase funding for statistics; 2) Create data compacts; 3) Produces progress reports…(more)
20 April 2015
Johannes Jutting publishes a post on the OECD Insights blog about PARIS21’s new report A Road Map for a Country-led Data Revolution. The post emphasizes the need for increased effort to enable countries to collect data for the SDGs.…(more)
20 April 2015
Gavin Jackson publishes an article in the Financial Times about ODI’s report on the ‘missing millions’. The article highlights the problems with data across a range of sectors and suggests possible areas for improvement.…(more)
20 April 2015
PARIS21 publishes a YouTube video about their road map for a country-led data revolution.…(more)
20 April 2015
The New York Times publishes an article by James Glanz asking if big data is a big economic dud. The article points out that while companies are increasingly using big data, there haven’t been clear economic effects. It may be that big data has not triggered economic growth because it is used to “cannibalize existing businesses” rather than to create new opportunities. Others argue that the benefits of big data are still to come…(more)
17 April 2015
The Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Open Data Watch, and other partners publish Data for Development: A Needs Assessment for SDG Monitoring and Statistical Capacity Development. The detailed report analyzes the costs of tools necessary to collect data for the SDGs in 77 of lowest-income countries in the world. The report estimates that approximately $1 billion per year will be required to finance the tools necessary to track the SDGs. If 50 percent of the cost are paid domestically, this would require donors to provide approximately $200 million more per year than they are currently believed to be financing.…(more)
17 April 2015
Open Data Watch publishes a post about a new report from the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) titled Data for Development: A Needs Assessment for SDG Monitoring and Statistical Capacity Building. The report was written by a large team and estimates that $1 billion a year will be required to finance improvements for statistics in 77 of the lowest-income countries in the world. Open Data Watch and the SDSN published an accompanying policy note.…(more)
17 April 2015
Amanda Glassman writes a blog post for the Center for Global Development titled Springtime for the Data Revolution. The post discusses the SDSN needs assessment report, makes the case for increased financing for data, and argues that new tools, such as data compacts, can ensure value for money.…(more)
17 April 2015
Norman Shamas and Samita Thapa publish a post about for Tech Change on gender data. They argue that there needs to be more and better data about gender. Additionally, data collection protocols should provide more freedom for non-binary gender options. India, for instance, recently allowed the gender ‘other’ to be added to election ballots.…(more)
16 April 2015
UNECLAC publishes an op-ed in the Curacao Chronicle about the data revolution. The report says that the challenge of the data revolution is to encourage the state, the market, and society to use data for the common good.…(more)
16 April 2015
Mo Ibrahim writes for The Financial Times titled The extreme poverty of data. The article highlights the need for improvements in data and calls for three interventions: 1) Increase resources for national statistical institutions; 2) Harness big data; 3) Produce high quality, open data.…(more)
15 April 2015
The Overseas Development Institute publishes a report titled The data revolution: finding the missing millions. The report highlights gaps in data collection and provides recommendations to improve the timeliness, quality, and coverage of data.…(more)
15 April 2015
Bitange Ndemo publishes an op-ed for Business Daily about data and innovation. The article discusses the potential of the data revolution in Africa while underscoring the constraints national statistical offices face.…(more)
14 April 2015
Travis Korte publishes a blog post for Data Innovation about Data2x. The report highlights the efforts of Data2x to improve gender data by: 1) Improving data gathering and processing; 2) Focusing on women’s labor; 3) Working on big data and gender.…(more)
14 April 2015
In a blog post, Morten Jerven reacts to tweets by Claire Melamed and Open Data Watch that question his article in African Arguments criticizing A World That Counts. He argues that the report’s central claim is that everything can (and should) be counted and known. He suggests that this is a fundamental flaw in the report.…(more)
13 April 2015
Claire Melamed publishes a post on the Global Dashboard making a case for the Global Partnership on Development Data. She identifies three things a partnership could do: 1) Share knowledge; 2) Promote shared standards; 3) Promote data sharing. Such a partnership could ensure that something lasting comes from current excitement about data.…(more)
13 April 2015
William Gerry publishes a post on the Open Data Institute blog about the African Data Consensus. The post celebrates, in particular, the commitment to the principle of “open by default”.…(more)
13 April 2015
Michael Igoe publishes an article on Devex titled When good data is hard to get. The article discusses new efforts to provide data about two communities in Kenya that have largely been uncounted.…(more)
13 April 2015
SciDevNet publishes an article by Natasha Gilbert headlined Call for joint funding to enhance African Statistics. The article discusses the Center for Global Development event on April 6, highlighting the need for increasing levels of aid for statistical capacity building.…(more)
10 April 2015
Development Initiatives publishes a news item titled African leaders take hold of the Data Revolution. The post highlights the draft resolution of the UNECA and AU on Africa’s Data Revolution.…(more)
9 April 2015
The UN News Centre writes about a study by the UN Global Pulse and the World Food Programme about the potential of big data for development. The article suggests that mobile phone data could replace traditional data collection instruments, saving money, time, and lives..…(more)
8 April 2015
Morten Jerven writes a blog post for African Arguments titled Big Questions for Big Data and what it can do for African Economic Development. Prof. Jerven provides more criticisms of the “hubris” he sees in the UN Data Revolution report. He also discusses the considerable challenges to using big data for development outcomes.…(more)
8 April 2015
Moses Sitati writes a blog for Policy Innovations titled The Smartification of Humanitarian Response. The post highlights the potential for data to improve humanitarian response.…(more)
7 April 2015
Lauren Post posts a blog for the Center for Global Development titled Moving from Rhetoric to Action to Improve Statistical Data in Africa. The post highlights conclusions from the event at the Center for Global Development held the day before. In particular, the post highlights a pledge from the IMF to encourage countries to provide data in a more timely manner.…(more)
7 April 2015
PARIS21 publishes PARIS21 IDR seminar – Participants support data compact while calling for more definition. The post describes a meeting hosted by PARIS21 during the UN Statstical Commission meetings on the data revolution.…(more)
6 April 2015
Saferworld publishes a report titled Measuring peace from 2015: An indicator framework at work. The report discusses the development of indicators for SDG Goal 16. The report notes that “[t]hird parties will be crucial actors in the data revolution for sustainable development.”…(more)
6 April 2015
The Center for Global Development hosts an event titled Statistical Tragedy in Africa? Evaluation the Data Base for African Economic Development. The event was a launch of a special issue of the Journal of Development Studies. The keynote
speakers were Yemi Kale and Morten Jerven. Video of the event is available...(more)