At the beginning of the month Open Data Watch traveled to Vancouver for Women Deliver 2019 – the largest gender equality conference with over 8,000 attendees. It was there that ODW put a strong focus on gender data, particularly civil registration and vital statistics. The month also saw the launch of PARIS21’s Statistical Capacity Development Outlook Report and Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s 2019 Africa SDG Index. As June comes to a close, many organizations in the development data space are preparing for the high-level political forum in New York City. Below is a list of additional sustainable development data articles and reports published in June. If there is something else to add, please contact us.
June
How A Census Can Drive Sustainable Development in Africa (6/3)
Mark Leon Goldberg releases a podcast on UNDispatch about the logistics of the 2020 census in Ghana. He is joined by Omar Seidu, the Head of Demographic Statistics and Coordinator for the Sustainable Development Goals at the Ghana Statistical Service, to explain the importance of the census for monitoring and advancing the 2030 Agenda. (source)
We’re constantly creating data – let’s use it: accelerating SDG progress through timely data (6/5)
Claire Melamed the CEO of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data writes a piece on accelerating progress on up-to-date data collection. She explains that partnerships and collaborations between governments, companies, academic institutions, and civil society are necessary for providing timely data collection for the Sustainable Development Goals. (source)
Open data and food security (6/7)
André Laperrière, authors an article for the Ecologist Journal for the Post-Industrial Age, on the value of open data for innovation in the agricultural sector to address food security and climate change. He argues that open data can increase data-driven practices which can prompt more sustainable farming and production practices. (source)
Australia’s public sector is poised for an open data revolution (6/10)
Rafael Moyano explains how the Australian government is making strides in storing data and improving tech systems in the public sector. He explains that the National Data Advisory Council met this past March for the first time and have worked together to create a framework to enable effective public data sharing. (source)
The Myth of China’s Big A.I. Advantage (6/13)
Justin Sherman and Samm Sacks author an essay for Slate, on the misconceptions behind the phrase “data is the new oil.” They argue that this term suggests a trade-off between privacy and innovation. Instead, they explain, that data need to be understood as a mechanism that benefits humanity and improves health transportation, and society. (source)
Insufficient data compromising achievement of gender equality (6/14)
Vereso Mwanga explains how the absence of data affect gender equality in an article for Kenya’s National Broadcaster. She focuses on the gender dynamics of land ownership in Kenya and the need for a stronger data collection mechanism. (source)
Official statistics are a public good for all (6/14)
Hervé Conan and Isabelle Valot from the French Agency for International Technical Expertise publish an article on the importance of official statistics for Euractiv. They explain that while there is a lot of data, there are not enough statistics, therefore they mention a new program, the European MEDSTAT IV project, which joins Mediterranean countries in a training program titled Comminication4Statistics and other initiatives to strengthen capacity and improve data visualization. (source)
2019 Africa SDG Index and Dashboards Report (6/14)
Sustainable Development Solutions Network releases a report which calls to action timely and high-quality data collection for many SDG indicators in Africa. The report uses the indicators of the Sustainable Development Goals to rank 52 African countries. (source)
Ghana is betting on a digital census in 2020 to transform its informal economy (6/18)
Youyou Zhou, a reporter for the Quartz, discusses Ghana’s new digital ambitions for the upcoming 2020 census. She explains why the government has chosen to use a digital tablet with a portable charger to conduct the 2020 census and how the government plans to reach all areas of Ghana. (source)
Statisticians spare no quarter in attempts to improve data (6/19)
The Times publishes a piece about newly released statistics on quarterly GDP estimates and account for every region in England and Wales. They explain that this will be an influential step for monitoring economic development. (source)
Newly released data show refugee numbers at record level (6/19)
Emi Suzuki creates a demographic breakdown of newly released data on refugees for the World Bank Blog. She uses infographics to explain current trends, which show rising numbers of people in need of international protection. (source)
Statistics are at the heart of achieving SDGs, says gender equality advocate (6/19)
Euroactiv publishes an interview with Fatiha Hassouni, the head of the gender equality unit of the intergovernmental organization Union for the Mediterranean. The interview focuses on statistics as being a crucial tool for reaching gender equality and supplies the evidence needed for formulating nondiscriminatory public policy. (source)
Boosting capacities on measuring sustainable development progress in Eastern Africa Report (6/19)
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) releases a report summarizing their capacity building workshops in Ethiopia. The workshops focused on identifying new data collection approaches on food security and agriculture. (source)
The Most Valuable Tool for Ending Poverty? Data (6/21)
The Good Men Project summarizes a discussion with Wolfgang Fengler, the lead economist at the World Bank, on why the data revolution hasn’t begun in the field of statistics itself. He stresses the importance of collecting transparent, accurate, and reliable data for ending poverty. (source)
We Need a Data-Rich Picture of What’s Killing the Planet (6/24)
Clive Thompson writes a piece for Wired on the need for a digital picture of the ecosystem to design environmental policy. He explains that in some cases the environmental data is collected through satellites but is not shared globally. (source)
US poverty statistics ignore millions of struggling Americans (6/24)
Sophie Mitra and Debra Brucker explain the flaws of US poverty statistics. They argue that the statistics are portraying an inaccurate picture of poverty in the US because they focus too heavily on income and lack an analysis of necessities such as health insurance and education. Through a multidimensional poverty analysis, they found that there many non-low-income families are struggling to access necessities. (source)
Data-Rich, Gender Data-Poor: Why Financial Service Providers Need to Use Gender Data (6/26)
Stephanie Oula, the Senior Program Officer for Data2x, authors a piece on the need for financial service providers (FSPs) to disaggregate their data by gender. She explains that important data on financial behaviors, preferences, and incomes, are being collected but not disaggregated by gender. (source)
This is why AI has a gender problem (6/30)
Pascale Fung the Professor of Electronic and Computer Engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology explains the gender dimensions of artificial intelligence (AI) through an analysis of virtual agents and gender disparities in the AI community. (source)
Statistics Ministry launches dashboard to track country’s progress on Sustainable Development Goals (6/30)
The ZeeBix WebTeam, announces the release of a new dashboard that will track India’s progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. They discuss how this unique platform aims to be user friendly and will hold reliable data from over 100 different datasets. (source)