Towards a data-driven Nepal that delivers to all

Story Highlights

• Data plays a critical role for successful implementation of federalism and acceleration of development progress in Nepal by improving fiscal relations and evidence-based decisions among the three tiers of governments.
• In mid-2019, the World Bank in partnership with the Department for International Development Nepal, launched the Nepal Data Literacy Program. The program aims to sustainably transfer data literacy skills to professionals in Nepal who can proactively engage in evidence-based policy making, increase data literacy of Nepalis and support federalism in the country.
• To power the data movement, the World Bank in collaboration with local partners has developed an open source Data Literacy Portal with resources and toolkits which can be customized and used in diverse contexts within and outside of Nepal to help users develop their data skills.

Jhamka Prasad, an advocate for the rights of deaf people, disliked courses like Mathematics as a child. Such courses were too complex for him. Furthermore, the teaching methodologies did not cater to someone low in hearing like him. He struggled to pass these courses.

Sijal Pokharel, an environment professional, spent most of her professional life intimidated by data and “data geeks” as she calls them. She thought she was incompetent when it came to working with data.

Likewise, Nishant Khanal, born and raised in what he calls a “data-unfriendly society”, mostly relied on anecdotal evidence, advice and sometimes, mere assumptions while making decisions ranging from ‘which phone to purchase?’ to ‘which college to study in?’.

These are three representative data related stories from across Nepal, even as we live in a world where data has become ubiquitous. At the same time, its access and avid usage are limited to a handful of experts such as analysts, economists and statisticians. Technology is at the fingertips of every individual. Nevertheless, a significant population still falls far behind when it comes to accessing, using and deriving meaningful information from data.

Why does data matter?

Simply put, data informs decisions, and for Nepal, data could not be more important than now as the country makes its historic transition to a federal structure. As highlighted in the World Bank’s recent report, data plays a critical role for successful implementation of federalism and acceleration of development progress. Government’s core activities like policy development, program implementation, and monitoring all require data. Availability, accessibility and right usage of data can ensure need-based interventions and make primary healthcare, education, sanitation and other basic necessities accessible to all. On one hand, federalism has brought decision-making closer to people. On the other, it has amplified the need for data and capacity to use it for evidence-based decisions.

Nurturing a data ecosystem: one individual and organization at a time

While Nepal undergoes a fundamental transformation, its data ecosystem needs to be built around three dimensions that spurred the global data revolution: data production, sharing and use. So far, the focus has been on data production. [tweetquote:[tweetText=To support Nepal’s federalism agenda and optimize value of produced data, the World Bank is working to increase data utilization capacity of the wider population. ,tweetData=WorldBank,tweetHash=]]

In mid-2019, the World Bank in partnership with the Department for International Development Nepal, launched the Nepal Data Literacy Program. The objective of this training-of-trainers program was to sustainably transfer data literacy skills to professionals in Nepal who can proactively engage in evidence-based policy making, increase data literacy of Nepalis and support federalism in the country.

And as for Jhamka Prasad, Sijal and Nishant, today they have a different story to tell. Jhamka Prasad is analyzing and testing credibility of disability related statistics at the local level. Realizing the dearth of data on disability, he is also advocating at the local and policy level to include disability related questions in the upcoming population census to collect specific and disaggregated data on people with disabilities.

For Sijal, the program was a career booster. She is now more efficient in cleaning and scraping large sets of data and converting them into meaningful information.

Nishant has already trained 20 journalists to analyze data and use innovative visualization to complement their stories. Currently, he is using open source data, resources and toolkits from the program to create a data portal to visualize provincial revenue and expenses.

While the data movement has already begun in Nepal, its momentum needs to be sustained. [tweetquote:[tweetText=Realizing Nepal’s federal and development goals requires a stronger and responsive data ecosystem that aids effective policy design to accelerate progress.,tweetData=WorldBank,tweetHash=]] More efforts need to be directed towards building capacity to use data and make data-driven decisions, and a robust data governance architecture clarifying roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders. While this is no ordinary task, it can be accomplished if done together.