2022 Predictions For The Evolution of Data Use
By Grant Cameron
Source: Innovative Advertising
At this time of the year, there is no shortage of predictions of what lies ahead. Typing “year ahead 2022” into your web browser alone yields 885 million results - more than one for every ten people on the planet. And for big data enthusiasts, limiting the search terms to “year ahead,” “big data,” and “2022” returns 300,000+ articles covering data trends, top tech predictions, and what we can expect from big data analytics.
The results are spottier, however, when we search for what’s in store for national data ecosystems and the implications for sustainable development. Yet, efficient national data ecosystems and better use of data are critical to helping organizations from the public sector, private sector, and civil society achieve better outcomes, particularly in sustainable development. I reflect on how these types of organizations will evolve in their use of data in the year ahead, what it means for the national and global data ecosystems, and how these changes will contribute to sustainable development.
Public Sector:
In 2022, national governments will continue to extract more value from the data they collect than they have in past years. For one, many have launched strategies to overcome current bottlenecks (e.g., data work remains siloed, the analytic capacity of staff needs a boost, and the ethical use of data needs to be codified). Secondly, the COVID-19 pandemic remains a key driver for improving data for decision-making. The pandemic provided the impetus for innovation in several countries, and policymakers welcomed a raft of new data sources that emphasized timeliness and granularity over absolute precision. The pandemic also demonstrated the importance of having solid reference data (from administrative sources and large-scale surveys), rules for data sharing in place within and across government, and the digital platforms and tools necessary to analyze data for policy purposes. However, for many governments in the Global South, these foundational elements were lacking.
Our best current measures of national government data production and use are outlined in the recent Implementation Review of the Cape Town Global Action Plan, which surveyed 100+ National Statistical Offices (NSOs), many of them based in the Global South. And the survey results are grim. One-half of survey respondents report a severe shortage of financial resources, while donor funding for data remained constant. And nearly one-third of NSOs reported severe IT infrastructure shortages. Reinforcing the challenge of enhancing cross-ministry data sharing and coordination, only 6% of low- and middle-income countries reported having satisfactory data coordination mechanisms with line ministries. Yet, as governments continue to target much of their spending on mitigating the ongoing impacts of COVID through 2022, funding for critical staff training, recruitment of data scientists, as well as improvements to IT infrastructure is likely to be limited. Furthermore, with delays in investments in human and physical capital, lower-capacity countries will struggle to collect and use essential data sources to inform critical decision-making.
On a positive note, many national governments, such as India, will likely do better regulating citizens’ data and microdata in 2022. As COVID gave way to data privacy concerns across the world, governments came under increased pressure over the last year to enhance data privacy laws and regulations and are likely to impose greater restrictions on data re-use and sharing. Additionally, governments will support private sector reporting on environmental social governance (ESG) reporting, which I discuss next, through the adoption of common rules and standards that will lead to greater comparability of corporate performance beyond income statements and balance sheets.
Private Sector:
Throughout 2021, private sector organizations in every industry prioritized environmental social governance (ESG), and there is every indication they will do more in 2022. Achieving the objective of the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature increases to 1.5°C was one driver prompting this change, and incentives from ESG-focused investors and corporate finance was another – more than $US130 trillion of private capital was committed during the COP26 to finance net zero over the next three decades.
Fortunately, these drivers are likely to press companies to continue to refine and improve their corporate disclosures, especially in the areas of energy and the environment. As reported by Reuters, “corporate websites, shareholder reports, and reports to regulatory bodies are already including more than just a passing reference to company performance in the environmental and human capital space.” We can also expect more data-rich disclosures, as data scientists spend less time cleaning data, integrating disparate storage systems, and finding the necessary storage capacity and processing power that have limited disclosures in the past. Moreover, companies will likely shift their efforts to improve location-based measures of carbon, which are essential for improving scope 3 reporting and assessing suppliers that can contribute to their net zero pledges.
In addition, not only will company disclosures improve, but they will also become more comparable, with the launch of a new International Sustainability Standards Board during this year’s COP26 to develop globally-consistent climate and broader sustainability disclosure standards for financial markets. The new Board’s work on climate-related disclosures builds on the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures’ recommendations and includes industry-specific disclosures, paving the way for new standards for climate reporting to take effect in the coming year.
Civil Society:
In 2021, the Word Bank was the latest global institution to recognize civil society’s legitimacy as a national data actor. The Bank’s data-focused 2021 World Development Report refers to civil society nearly 150 times, in light of the increasing number of programs that use of data to monitor the effects of government policies, improve service delivery, and track corruption (e.g., Cambodia and Ethiopia).
The report also notes civil society’s contribution to providing data – primarily through citizen science – that is used to complement government data, and, on occasion, to challenge government statistics. In 2022, we are likely to see more applications of citizen science data, as global standards for collecting these data proliferate (e.g., guidelines for plastic litter), and with the growth of an international body to scale successful citizen science data applications and accelerate awareness-raising.
Additionally, 2022 should see civil society increase its scrutiny of data-driven discrimination. Research is flagging that AI algorithms can suffer from discriminatory bias which can compound problems among society’s more vulnerable groups. And efforts by civil society groups, such as the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and academic initiatives, such as the one undertaken by Cornell’s Institute for the Social Sciences are likely to proliferate.
Putting It All Together:
In 2022, the dual threats of the pandemic and climate change will continue to drive improvements in data production and use by businesses, governments, and civil societies. Unfortunately, examples of lasting and productive connections across these three sectors for safe and effective data use and re-use continue to remain the exception and not the rule. Fortunately, there are examples of groups that are catalyzing evidence-based collaboratives across these sectors (e.g., the Dutch Sustainability Coalition collaboration to achieve the SDGs), and my hope is that this trend will continue throughout the years to come.