As 2020 comes to a close, Open Data Watch (ODW) wishes all of our partners a healthy and happy new year. This year, despite the unprecedented challenges, ODW continued work towards transparency and access to high-quality data to guide critical decisions. To learn more about this year’s accomplishments, check out our end of the year blog.
ODW ended the year strong with the ODIN 2020/21 Executive Summary release. 2020 marks ODW’s 5th edition, and it is open data’s biggest year yet.
Below is a selected list of sustainable development data articles and reports published in December. For specific items on the intersection of development data and COVID-19, visit our “Data in the Time of COVID-19.” Recently, the page has been updated to have a new section on vaccination data and resources to understand its distribution. If there is something else to add, please contact us.
December
Why create a COVID-19 Data and Innovation Centre (December)
CEPEI, in partnership with the United Nations Multi-Partner Trust Fund and the support of Tableau, launches the COVID-19 Data Centre. This digital platform will help countries make better decisions regarding the COVID-19 distribution of resources. This initiative will serve as a critical resource for the UN COVID-19 Multi-Partner Trust Fund and strengthen response and recovery actions in the global south. (source)
Taking stock of open data (December)
Shaida Badiee, ODW’s Managing Director, discusses why open data matters and how it relates to data journalism on a podcast with DataJournalism.com. The podcast highlights ODW’s recent work on ODIN 2020/21, an index measuring the openness and coverage of official statistics across 187 countries. (source)
Guideline for the developing: an integrated user engagement strategy for national statistical systems (December)
The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa publishes new guidelines for developing an integrated user engagement strategy for national statistical systems. The guidelines consist of tips and tricks on using media to establish dialogue with data users. (source)
Gender and Covid-19 vaccines: Lack of data on gender differences could impact rollout (12/4)
As governments worldwide go on a buying spree for COVID-19 vaccines, a group of scientists and health experts’ author a piece for France24 to raise concerns that data on gender differences and the virus are not being gathered. This, they argue, could significantly impact their rollout. (source)
HHS Publishes COVID-19 Hospital Facility-Level Data (12/7)
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) makes a significant release of facility-level hospitalization data going back to August. The update allows researchers, policymakers, and others to have more meaningful insights into local COVID-19 response efforts. (source)
Under COVID-19, data needs have never been higher, yet financing is stagnant (12/8)
PARIS21’s PRESS2020 report finds that 63 percent of low-income and lower-middle-income countries need additional financing for data and statistics. However, they explain that official funding flows to data and statistics amounted to only 693 million USD in 2018. (source)
Why financing data matters more than ever (12/8)
Shaida Badiee, Managing Director of Open Data Watch, and Johannes Jütting, Executive Head of PARIS21, discuss why investing in statistics today is crucial to responding diligently, rapidly, and appropriately to policy challenges. (source)
COVID vaccines: the world’s medical regulators need access to open data (12/8)
Nature authors a piece on the development of COVID-19 vaccines and the role of open data. The world’s medical regulators have stressed the need for a secure way to share vaccine data. Nature explains that if regulators could compare their findings and analyses with those of others, their decisions would be more validated. (source)
Accounting for sex and gender makes for better science (12/9)
Nature releases an article on a current policy that the European Commission implemented to require grant recipients to include sex and gender analysis in their research design. They explain that this is a significant achievement since, in the past, not accounting for sex and gender have been catastrophic for human health. (source)
New data from WHO/Europe shows links between gender and non-communicable diseases (12/9)
New gender-specific data from the World Health Organization Europe office shows that men and women have different biological and behavioral traits that affect the probability of contracting non-communicable diseases. (source)
Report shows slow progress on sex-disaggregated data (12/10)
Inga Vesper authors a piece for SciDevNet on ODW’s latest ODIN release. She highlights that ODIN reveals that most countries in the world are not publishing data disaggregated by sex. This impedes efforts to improve gender equality. (source)
How our data encodes systematic racism (12/10)
Deborah Raji authors a piece for MIT Technology Review on the dangers of toxic ideologies in automated systems. She explains that technologists must take responsibility for data sets and algorithms used to construct AI systems that are embedded with racist ideologies that enable structural racism. (source)
Adopting Rapid Mortality Surveillance for A Post-COVID-19 Era (12/10)
The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for accurate and reliable mortality data. They explain that without high-quality civil registration and vital statistics systems, it will be difficult to universally register deaths nationwide. (source)
Using data to fight COVID-19 in Ghana (12/14)
The Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data examines how Ghana uses mobile phone data to determine the impact of COVID-19 lockdown measures. The initiative uses anonymized data from mobile phone cell towers to understand local trends such as crowd density within districts. (source)
Press Release: New collaboration will assist African national statistical offices with big data analytics (12/15)
Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data press release discusses a new collaboration that will assist the African national statistical office in harnessing big data analytics. This collaboration will help promote the Sustainable Development Goals and provide insight into the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa. (source)
Opening Data, Closing Gender Data Gaps, and Building Back Better (12/15)
Deirdre Appel, Program Manager at Open Data Watch, explains the importance of open gender data as a key input in the global response to COVID-19 and ensuring that policymakers are safeguarding women and girls’ rights around the world. (source)
How a new data portal aims to accelerate insights for the Pacific (12/16)
Lisa Cornish writes a piece for Devex on The Pacific Data Hub that was launched in early December. The hub is already providing access to more than 5,000 data sets from 78 organizations. Cornish explains that this is crucial in promoting knowledge sharing on climate change, economic development, health, education, and more. (source)
Survey of National Statistical Offices (NSOs) during COVID-19 (12/16)
In coordination with the five UN Regional Commissions, the World Bank, and the United Nations Statistical Division (UNSD) conduct a global online survey to assess how national statistical offices cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. This survey will provide critical insights into identifying the financial and technical support they need to streamline their work program. (source)
Gender Sector Statistics Plan (12/16)
Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) publishes a Gender Sector Statistics Plan (GSSP) as part of the Kenya Strategy for the Development of Statistics (KSDS). KNBS aims to strengthen Kenya’s reporting of gender statistics to promote gender quality and provide insightful information on the country’s progress. (source)
Measuring and understanding gender-based violence in Indonesia amid the COVID-19 pandemic (12/16)
This World Bank blog discusses how policymakers, NGOs, and academics are working to understand the magnitude of gender-based violence. The East Asia and Pacific Gender Innovation Lab at the World Bank collected data from 866 women and Indonesia to understand the factors associated with greater exposure to gender-based violence. (source)
Dealing with disruption: National statistical offices are adjusting to continued challenges as COVID-19 keeps affecting their operations (12/17)
The United Nations Statistics Division summarizes findings from the third round of their survey on disruptions to National Statistical Offices’ (NSOs) operations, completed in October with 125 countries participating. The survey serves as a glimpse of the long-term impacts that the COVID-19 pandemic will have on NSOs’ operations. (source)
Data for development: Revisiting the non-personal data governance framework (12/30)
Astha Kapoor authors a piece for the Observer Research Foundation which discusses the recent Non-Personal Data (NPD) governance framework for India established by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY). She explains that any new framework needs to account for individuals and communities and ensure that they control their data. (source)