Meet TReNDS' New Director: A Q & A with Grant Cameron
Meet Grant Cameron
Grant has over 35 years of experience working in economics and statistics, most recently at the World Bank where he was Manager of the Advisory Services and Economic Statistics Department. This role involved leading the International Comparison Program, the Bank's work on statistical capacity building, National Accounts, and much more. Grant has also served as an economist and statistician within the Government of Canada.
Q&A
Throughout your career, what area(s) of data for development have you primarily focused on?
It’s been a long career, and I have worked in many areas.
In the early stages of my career in the Canadian government, I was drawn to developing statistical products that were central to policymaking. Two examples come to mind. While at Statistics Canada, I participated in developing the statistical data on which value-added tax revenues were allocated between federal and provincial governments. I also helped build an integrated database of administrative data and household surveys to assess changes in personal tax and social programs. I later moved to the Finance Department where I applied these databases to develop tax policy.
Moving to the World Bank, my responsibilities shifted beyond specific data products. I worked to develop strategies to improve the entire statistical system in countries ranging from Myanmar and Malaysia to India. I also launched a successful program supporting innovations in data production tied to local decision-making. One example involved increasing the effectiveness of refugee aid by using crowdsourced data to gauge the rate of cross-border migrations between Uganda and South Sudan.
Is there an emerging area of data for development that you are most eager to tackle in your new role with TReNDS?
Big data is a game-changer for improving decision-making. But transforming big data into useful information for decision-makers remains a challenge and requires data producers to develop a culture of innovation and experimentation. Big data also raises issues around the ethical use of personal data, and this requires a regulatory response. So the challenge is: how do you balance fostering a culture of innovation while protecting against unethical data use? Another issue I’m eager to delve further into involves how we can create more and better incentives to enable private sector entities to share their data for public purposes. If data are being recognized by firms as an asset that create income, they aren’t likely to give it away. I believe TReNDS’ expansive network of researchers and academics can play a role in exploring these issues.
What is the most interesting recent use of data you’ve seen?
The COVID-19 pandemic is full of examples of how innovations in data collection provided near-real- time data from households and enterprises. These data were critical not only for developing policy responses to track and mitigate the spread of COVID-19, but also for addressing the economic, social, and psychological impacts of the pandemic.
What do you think are the most challenging issues facing governments this year for how they will collect, manage, and share data? What are the opportunities?
The COVID-19 pandemic also highlighted weaknesses in government data and statistics. This year, governments will turn to addressing these deficiencies. To start, ensuring greater resilience in production processes should top the list in improvement plans, as there were delays in data releases and severe disruptions in statistical operations (including planned decennial censuses) resulting from the lock-downs and quarantine measures. Second, weaknesses in data sharing arrangements across government ministries – health, National Statistical Offices, geospatial data departments - hampered policy response. So we need better intra-governmental data sharing arrangements to avoid this problem in the future.
Financing for data and statistics continues to be a critical issue. What is needed to garner more support (and funding) for data and statistics in the development space, and how can research networks, like TReNDS, help play a role?
The pandemic has shown the value of data to both policymakers and the public. I hope to see more governments’ strategies designed to increase the value of the data they collect and use to improve policymaking and deliver better services to their citizenry. This should lead to more stable funding for the data agenda. TReNDS can support these efforts by providing case studies and synthesizing best practices to inform these strategies regarding governance arrangements, innovations in data production and use, and data sharing modalities.
Anything else you would like to add?
I am thrilled to be joining SDSN and leading the TReNDS’ workstream. Leveraging the strength of researchers from across the globe to address evidence gaps in development issues is something I look forward to working on.