friday lunchtime lecture: a data revolution for international development

8/17/2019 Friday lunchtime lecture: A data revolution for international development

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A data revolution in

development?Rupert Simons

13 May, 2016


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Topics for discussion

• Understand initiatives being taken to close those gaps

• Assess the transparency of aid spending and results

• Describe some development data gaps


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Data gaps in an emergency: Sierra Leone

Managing Ebola Mining industry collapses Emergency budgeting

• Mining companies allprivately held or quotedon AIM, outside SL

•

Taxes, royalties fell from ~$50m to ~$10m

• Contracts, payments notpublished

• GDP fell by ~20% in 2015• Weekly tax take fell from

~$10 to ~$5 million in

worst weeks of Ebola• 70% of budget is wages• >$100million emergency

loan needed from IMF

• Where are the patients?• Where are the

ambulances?•

Have the Ebola reliefworkers been paid?

0

4590

135

180

2007 2009 2011 2013 2015

Iron ore price, USD per mt

Source: WHO, FT, IMF


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Data gaps in development: a global problem

Economic growth Women who die giving birth Agricultural production

• Only 1 in 5 Africancountries derive deathrates from national civicregistries

• Maternal mortalitycalculated from algorithmbased on GDP, fertilityrate and “skilledattendance at birth”

• Ethiopian maize, tefproduction used to growby 2-3% per year

•

Since 2008, production hasnearly doubled• 10-15 million Ethiopians

still require food aid

• 1950s methods measureagriculture, modernmethods services

•

‘Rebasing’ doubled GDP inNigeria and Ghana• Lower income countries

get cheaper loans

0

750

1500

2250

3000

2007 2009 2011 2013 2015

Nigeria GDP, USD per capita

Source: Morten Jerven, Development Initiatives, FAO

1990 2015

Maternal mortality, thousands


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Understand initiatives being taken to close those gaps


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Source: UN report ‘A World that Counts’

Top down: Donors and UN agencies have helped funda growing number of household surveys

Unfortunately global priorities often trump national ones:


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Bottom up: there is growing use of citizen generated data . . .

Source: Open Nepal, ipaidabribe.com

Thousands of Indians report when they were asked for, paid orrefused to pay a bribe

Nepalese citizens use a localhelpdesk after the earthquake


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. . . and there may be some big dataapplications, though there are risks too

Source: UN report ‘A World that Counts’

Example: Using cellphone calls to track malaria in Cote d’Ivoire


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Meanwhile, civic registration andadministrative data lags far behind

Source: Development Initiatives “Data Revolution in Africa”

Census Poverty census Birth statistics

Recent (last 10years for census,last 3-5 years forsurvey)

Out of date

Unusable orunavailable

Quality and availability of data in African countries,percentage of countries


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Estimates for closing data gaps range widely,with $100-200 million per year as the median

Source: Brookings; CGD; SDSN

17-66

Cost of building and maintaining statistical systems tomonitor the Sustainable Development GoalsUSD million per year

100-200

1,100

900- 1,000

>10,000

New money

Existing aid

Own resources

Not specified


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Understand initiatives being taken to close those gaps


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Publish What You Fund reviewed the quality ofdata produced by major aid donors

Activity level data(28 indicators)

Organisation leveldata (8 indicators)

Commitment totransparency (3indicators)

We worked withpeople from

46 agencies in

22 countries

and 36independent reviewersand CSOs

100

To assess 39 indicators ofdata on aid and development

Maximum possible score

Over a data collectionperiod of 14 weeks


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What we found: Aid is getting moretransparent

2013 Index 2014 Index 2016 Index

Very GoodGoodFairPoorVery Poor

Source: Aid Transparency Index 2013-16

Performance of agencies in the Index

Total 67 68 46

Ten donors did very well:

• UNDP• U.S. – MCC• UNICEF• UK – DFID• The Global Fund•

World Bank – IDA• IADB• AsDB• Sweden• AfDB


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The norm is gradually shifting from annualreporting to quarterly, monthly or real time

Annual reporting • Companies House/ Charity Commission returns • OECD-DAC Credit Reporting Statistics (for official donors)• Annual report on website (usually in PDF)

Regular updating• Monthly or quarterly publication• Machine-readable and web formats• Edit for confidentiality

Real-time data sharing• Uploaded automatically• Daily decision-making• Limited editing


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!""#

Over 400 organisations are now publishing datain the IATI standard

Number of IATI publishers by type2011-15

Source: IATI annual report 2015


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However, only a minority of donors arepublishing forward-looking spending data

Forecast aid flows recorded in IATINovember 2015 snapshot

Source: IATI annual report 2015


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Some governments are using the data

NGOs are using it too,

for example:

Source: IATI, Development Gateway

IATI import system inuse

IATI import systemunder development

IATI partner country


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Very few other people are using it

Source: Press searches

Flood victims have demanded thatsome of Britain’s £12billion foreign

aid budget is used to help themafter a catastrophic few weeks.


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Questions

friday lunchtime lecture: a data revolution for international development

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