Harnessing the
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Data is the building block of information. And we need to be thinking about how we can use it to make a difference at scale.
Hear from the leaders in civil society, the funding community, and the private sector as they discuss the challenges in making data community-driven, the opportunities that lie in doing so, and what steps the various stakeholders can take today. |
Key takeaways
- As India suffered the impact of COVID-19 through the last year, one of the most visible gaps was the lack of good quality data that could have been leveraged to tackle the crisis. This has prompted an increased interest amongst nonprofits, funders and the government to work towards strengthening the data ecosystem in the development sector.
- In India, we have to think of data as a very important foundation for democracy, for empowering the people, because it can do a lot of good in serving the most vulnerable.
- Empowering people with data requires changing how data is collected, used, and controlled – and doing so in ways that center the protection of individual agency and collective rights, and actively counters discrimination. It also requires changing the current political economy of digital systems.
- Data for good requires infrastructure. We need to think as hard and as thoughtfully about the governance methods and the organizational forms that need to be invented, as about the data itself.
- A lot of NGOs keep data very close to their chest; there’s a lot of reluctance to share that data. This needs to change. We all need to see how much of our data we can bring onto a shared platform so we can make our projects richer.
- Funders must insist that their NGOs become data driven, and that they start empowering their communities and field workers. Funding data should be looked at as programmatic funding.
session highlights
Civil society and democracy depend on digital systems. How these systems work shapes the potential that individuals and communities have for collective action. Despite this, we don’t currently have a truly collective approach to understanding data, data rights, or data governance.
In this Learning Lab - Harnessing the Power of Data: Data for Good Exchange (D4GX) in India, participants spoke about the power data has to empower the most marginalized populations in the country. They discussed what a community-centric approach to data would look like, the role of governments and businesses in creating a vibrant data-led ecosystem, and the support needed from funders.
The Lab also gave audiences a chance to hear from people who are at the forefront of making data work for the most vulnerable in India. Leaders in civil society and philanthropy spoke about the value of co-creating systems for data collection and sharing, the need for more publicly available government data, and the transformative role a common data platform could play.
In this Learning Lab - Harnessing the Power of Data: Data for Good Exchange (D4GX) in India, participants spoke about the power data has to empower the most marginalized populations in the country. They discussed what a community-centric approach to data would look like, the role of governments and businesses in creating a vibrant data-led ecosystem, and the support needed from funders.
The Lab also gave audiences a chance to hear from people who are at the forefront of making data work for the most vulnerable in India. Leaders in civil society and philanthropy spoke about the value of co-creating systems for data collection and sharing, the need for more publicly available government data, and the transformative role a common data platform could play.
quotes
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“In the age of national digitized ID, digital is everywhere, it is always ‘on’. I like to say to people that it’s quaint to think that you ‘go online’; it’s increasingly unlikely that you’re ever offline.” – Lucy Bernholz, Stanford PACS |
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“Where are the young people that are really going to be thinking about filling these gaps? Where is the talent that will put into place the governance structures required for technology that hasn’t even been invented today?” – Shriya Sethi, International Innovation Corps, UChicago |
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“When we started off two decades ago we saw a range of problems that governments were facing. Today, they’re still facing the same problems. This is worrying because while we’ve made a leap with technology, cities continue to lack data that can help them govern better.” – Pratima Joshi, Shelter Associates |
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“For NGOs it’s not too early to think about how data can be used -- not just for monitoring purposes or for publishing on a website -- but by the communities themselves to have greater agency in their own choices and development.” – Rikin Gandhi, Digital Green |
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“How do we think of data ownership with the individual at the center; about the capacity to use data being with people who want to change their own lives? How do we build this into our mindsets, our investment models, and our program design?” – Sanjay Purohit, Societal Platform |
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“As donors and NGOs we need to ask whether the amount of data we collect is optimal. Is it needed? And is it in a format that we can use?” – Santosh Abraham, NASSCOM Foundation |
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“Funders must insist that their NGOs become data driven, that they embark on this journey, and along the way that they also start empowering their communities and field workers. It should be looked at as programmatic funding.” – Rekha Koita, Koita Foundation |
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“We have a long way to go to have government data available publicly across the board.” – Tarun Betala, Bloomberg LP |
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