As the international community prepares for the UN General Assembly where the Sustainable Development Goals will be officially adopted, there have been several important efforts to build the momentum of the data revolution. We provide summaries of reports, blogs, and articles on the topic of the data revolution below. If we have missed something, please contact us.
18 September 2015
Jeffery Sachs, Shaida Badiee, Robert Chen, and Enrico Giovannini write an article for Project Syndicate titled The Data Revolution for Sustainable Development. The post highlights the range of issues associated with the data revolution in the context of the upcoming United Nations General Assembly. The authors indicate that the Sustainable Development Solutions Network and Global Parnership for Sustainable Development Data will play an active role in improving data for the SDGs….(more)
18 September 2015
Josh Powell writes a blog post on the Development Gateway blog titled Designing a Human-Centered Data Revolution. The post draws on insights Development Gateway has gathered as they have worked on issues related to the data revolution. They suggest focusing on 1) Data for what, 2) Data for whom, 3) Understanding data use, 4) Quality, not quantity….(more)
13 September 2015
Muchiri Nyaggah writes a post for the Local Development Research Institute titled Three Imperatives for the Data Revolution in Africa. The post describes the importance of human capital development, the access to information environment, and statistical capacity development for the data revolution in Africa….(more)
10 September 2015
Jeff O’Malley writes a post for the UNICEF blog about turning data about children into data for children. The article highlights efforts to use new technologies and the data revolution to address issues of importance to children. The post refers to UNICEF’s Data for Children Forum….(more)
10 September 2015
Savita Bailur writes a post for the Centre for Public Impact titled Open data: unlocking development potential in Africa and Asia. The post describes the potential of open data to motivate people to participate in development….(more)
10 September 2015
Open Nepal publishes a post about the important actors in promoting the data revolution in Nepal….(more)
9 September 2015
Open Data Watch writes a post titled Stuffed and Unstuffed: A Comment on Chandy & Zhang. The post responds to the calculations from the Brookings Institution and suggests that more will be required for the data revolution to be a success than was suggested by Chandy and Zhang….(more)
8 September 2015
Misha Belkindas writes a post for Open Data Watch titled How well do partnerships for statistics work? The post describes research for studies on partnerships and the need to learn lessons from previous partnerships for the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data….(more)
7 September 2015
Bitange Ndemo publishes an article on the Daily Nation about improving data knowledge in East Africa. He discusses the recently completed Africa Open Data Conference in Tanzania and the challenges to the data revolution in Africa….(more)
7 September 2015
Katie Nguyen writes a post for Thomson Reuters Foundation titled Wanted: A data revolution to track new U.N. development goals. The article highlights many of the gaps, opportunities, and challenges to better collecting and disseminating data…(more)
2 September 2015
The Pulse Lab Kampala publishes a blog post titled Digital Footprints in Africa. The post highlights a variety of pilot projects to harness digital data in Uganda…(more)
2 September 2015
Sophia Ayele writes a blog post for the Oxfam blog titled A data revolution is underway. Will NGOs miss the boat? The article highlights some of the contributors to the data revolution and highlights the need for greater involvement of NGOs…(more)
2 September 2015
Can open data prevent a global food shortage? This question is posed in an article by Sean Hargrave for the Guardian. The article discusses the work of Godan and says that in order to feed the growing population “The world needs a new agricultural revolution that’s going to come through a data revolution.”…(more)
1 September 2015
Open Data for Development (OD4D) publishes the conference report for the Third International Open Data Conference titled Enabling the Data Revolution. The report highlights key themes that emerged from the conference…(more)
1 September 2015
Zach Christensen writes a blog post on the Development Gateway blog titled The SDGs– What’s Your Baseline? The post highlights gaps in key indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals and argues that a data revolution will be necessary to track progress toward the SDGs…(more)
31 August 2015
Laurence Chandy and Christine Zhang write a post titled Stuffing data gaps with dollars: What will it cost to close the data deficit in poor countries? The authors calculated the costs of surveys needed in developing countries and conclude that the global financing gap is “trivially small”. The provide recommendations for international organizations…(more)
26 August 2015
Joel Gurin, Laura Manley, and Oleg Petrov write a blog post for the World Bank titled New Report: How Open Data can drive sustainable development. The blog discusses a new report by the same authors which discusses the benefits of open data as part of the data revolution…(more)
25 August 2015
The Oxford Martin School publishes an expression of interest to host WorldStat. WorldStat will be an organization focused on improving the reliability and availability of global statistics…(more)
25 August 2015
ISEEED posts an expression of interest to host the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. The hosts of the Global Partnership will play a major role in the success of the data revolution…(more)
25 August 2015
Flashy innovation will not fuel the data revolution according to an article for SciDevNet by Shannon Kindornay. She says that the data revolution should center on national statistical offices. Furthermore, partnerships, time, and money will be necessary for the data revolution to be successful…(more)
25 August 2015
Neil Lawrence writes an article for The Guardian titled How Africa can benefit from the data revolution. The article highlights the potential of various technological advances to advance the data revolution. While many false hopes have centered around Africa in the past, the data revolution can succeed by building up local solutions to problems.…(more)
20 August 2015
Open MENA publishes a post titled A Data Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa. The post highlights the gaps in data use in MENA and summarizes some thoughts about ways to address them…(more)
19 August 2015
Paige Kirby writes a blog post for Development Gateway titled From Goal to Progress: Making the Most of Data. The post discusses the MDGs and SDGs and provides some suggestions to best use data in light of the data revolution.…(more)
13 August 2015
Open Data for Development (OD4D) announces the Africa Open Data Collaboration Fund which provides funding for the Africa Open Data Community to advance the African Data Revolution….(more)
11 August 2015
The New Times publishes an article by Claude K Migisha with the headline SDGs and the data revolution, where is Rwanda? The article discusses the data revolution and asks how Rwanda can benefit locally from the data revolution…(more)
11 August 2015
PARIS21 launches an inventory of innovations as part of its Informing a Data Revolution project. The inventory includes a range of different projects related to the data revolution.…(more)
10 August 2015
Goal 18 posts an article titled The Data Revolution We Need to its blog. The post argues that more needs to be done to help monitor the SDGs. The article points to the work done by several organizations to define what can be done to realize the data revolution.…(more)
August 2015
Post-2015 Data Test publishes a new report on Sierra Leone. The report highlights challenges the country faces and existing data gaps…(more)
3 August 2015
Innov8tiv Magazine publishes an article titled Global Development Community for Accuracy of Data. The article describes a new effort to push for the data revolution in Africa called Accur8Africa which calls for more accurate data and better data in Africa.…(more)
August 2015
Post-2015 Data Test publishes a new report on Sierra Leone. The report highlights challenges the country faces and existing data gaps…(more)
31 July 2015
Nnenna Nwakanma writes a blog post for the Web Foundation titled Five ways Addis was different from Doha and Monterrey. The reasons were: 1) This time, the financing for development conference was held in a low-income country. 2) Civil society was well-organised, and we saw increased participation from the Global South. 3) Data for transparency and measuring development was appreciated. 4) The international community is still failing to make progress on tax evasion. 5) Negotiations went late and fell short of many hopes.…(more)
29 July 2015
The Hewlett Foundation Blog publishes a post titled Five New Resources to Advance the Data Revolution in Global Development. The post highlights five recent publications from Open Data Watch 1) The Data Impacts project, 2) Data Revolution FAQs, 3) Partnerships and Financing for Statistics, 4) Aid for Statistics, 5) Data for Development…(more)
24 July 2015
Harpinder Collacott writes a blog post for Post2015.org titled Leaving no one behind– it’s all about the data. The post discusses the need to improve data and provide disaggregated data about people, rather than countries, to fulfill the data revolution.…(more)
23 July 2015
Joe Powell writes a post for the Open Government Partnership blog about the Financing for Development meeting. He touches on several themes including the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. He praises this saying, “A true data revolution requires the hard, often unheralded, work of strengthening national statistics offices, improving access to information commissions, proactive publishing government data sets and ensuring a coherent records management system is in place.”…(more)
23 July 2015
Devex publishes a post by Romilly Greenhill titled From Addis to New York: What does the FFD summit imply for the SDGs? The article addresses a number of issues, including data, about which it says that “Addis marked a shift in the data revolution conversation from talk to action.”…(more)
23 July 2015
Casey Dunning and Amanda Glassman write a blog post on the Center for Global Development blog titled FFD Update: US Delivers on DRM, Verdict Still Out On Data. The post shows that financial commitments to the data revolution are welcome but are inadequate to meet needs.…(more)
22 July 2015
The US Chamber of Commerce Corporate Citizenship Center posts the text of an interview with Dr. Daniela Ligiero who discusses the gender equality efforts of the UN Foundation. The interview includes a brief discussion of the the gender data revolution, which Dr. Ligiero says is very important as the Sustainable Development Goals are being developed.…(more)
20 July 2015
The Monkey Cage Blog of the Washington Post publishes a blog by Rohini Pande and Florian Blum about data poverty. The authors argue that data deprivation reduces the ability of countries to address problems. The post discusses data successes and failures in several countries including Denmark, Tanzania, Brazil, and India.…(more)
20 July 2015
Lisa Cornish writes an article for Devex called Data in action: The role of data in humanitarian disasters. The article discusses the data efforts of several organizations, including World Vision’s efforts in Vanuatu after Cyclone Pam where data helped inform response to the disaster.…(more)
17 July 2015
Jeff Tyson writes an article for Devex titled Global development’s ‘data intermediaries’ and their critical role post-2015. The article suggests that data intermediaries can make data more meaningful for policy makers and, thus, ensure the success of the data revolution….(more)
15 July 2015
Inga Vesper writes an article for SciDevNet titled The quest for elusive development data. The article discusses the Third Financing for Development Conference and describes the many data gaps in development data, including information about the conference itself. The report quotes Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, who says “Data is the only steering wheel that can drive progress on the SDGs.”.…(more)