Implementing Data-Smart Solutions for Better Lives
Increases in digital connectivity and technological capacity, exponential growth in data production and data analytics capabilities are transforming societies across the globe. Governments that harness these new trends and capabilities will be better positioned to effectively deliver services to their citizens, including the most marginalized groups. The World Development Report 2021: Data for Better Lives, lays out an agenda for building integrated national data systems, while also acknowledging the downside risks of the data revolution.
By leveraging data, governments can provide more inclusive services. Data can also enable better resource allocation, and more effective responses to emerging opportunities and threats. However, low- and middle-income countries face significant challenges as they attempt to generate the data, analysis, and resultant insights needed to inform and monitor development policies and programs, to engage citizens in public affairs, and to address crisis situations that require agility and responsiveness.
Data-smart initiatives can address data supply or demand, capacity building, analytics, multi-stakeholder engagement, or the broader data ecosystem – including the governance framework, skills, institutions, business processes, and standards that make it possible to exploit the potential of data.
The World Bank is supporting government and non-government actors in scaling up the use of data in decision-making, program design and monitoring, and stakeholder engagement by embedding data-related components in its operations. As countries strengthen their capacity to generate and use data, the World Bank partners with them to identify areas where enhanced attention to data can make a difference.
Toolkit for Task Teams to Mainstream Data in Operations
With support from the Human Rights, Inclusion and Empowerment Umbrella Trust Fund (HRIETF), the World Bank has created a toolkit to help task teams incorporate data-smart initiatives into operations more systematically, across all sectors and country contexts. The toolkit suggests a problem-driven methodology aligned with the stages of the World Bank project cycle and includes practical examples from existing operations with data components.
The toolkit takes a rights-based approach to data. Data can facilitate more inclusive public service delivery and equal application of the law, benefitting low-income and marginalized groups, and can help people better understand their own rights and how to exercise them. A rights-based approach to data also recognizes the significance of public access to information and prioritizes attention to the risks associated with increased use of data, including threats to personal privacy rights.