Frivolous spending and opaque processes plague Nigeria’s federal budget. Civic startup BudgIT launched in 2011 to take on this challenge. The organization aims to make budgetary data from Nigeria’s Federal Government more accessible and understandable through digital technologies, including making PDFs machine-readable and designing visual representations of the data for those with low data literacy.
Read MoreInternational nonprofit BRAC developed a data-driven approach to account and care for mothers and young children in Bangladeshi slums through healthcare initiative Manoshi. Manoshi built the capacity of local health workers in Bangladesh to derive actionable data from social mapping, local censuses, and real-time data-sharing via mobile technology, contributing to more timely and effective maternal health interventions in urban slums.
Read MoreThe Ugandan government, with the support of UNICEF, began leapfrogging its outmoded health system in 2011 by introducing an SMS-based health reporting program called mTRAC. This program has supported significant improvements in the country’s health system, including halving of response time to disease outbreaks and reducing medication stockouts, the latter of which resulted in fewer malaria-related deaths.
Read MoreHigh rates of violent crime dealt a blow to Atlantic City’s citizens and businesses in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Hamstrung by a reduced force, the Atlantic City Police Department turned to new solutions to optimize resources for predicting and preventing crime. This included risk terrain modeling (RTM), an analytical technique combining crime data and environmental risk factors to identify high-risk areas.
Read MoreThe number and scope of organizations and disciplines involved in disasters is large, and the different ways in which they approach loss measurement can prove challenging to manage. However, in order for countries to report their progress on these issues against the Sendai Framework and the SDGs, robust data and information systems will be crucial.
Read MorePopulation-related elements are present in approximately 40% of the SDG indicators. Without appropriate, accurate, and timely data, framed by the principle of ‘no-one left behind’, our ability to monitor progress towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals will be constrained.
Read MoreThe Open Algorithms project is a socio-technological innovation to leverage private sector data for public good purposes by “sending the code to the data” in a privacy-preserving, participatory, commercially sensible, scalable, and sustainable manner. This brief highlights replicable lessons from the experiences of OPAL pilot projects in Senegal and Colombia in terms of participatory design of data projects.
Read MoreThis guide provides an initial platform to meet the demand for useful and user-friendly criteria prioritizing investments of financial and human resources in data systems. It focuses on two crucial aspects of the designing for action question: how best to tailor data systems to decision-maker needs, and how best to combine data technologies to create the most value.
Read MoreIn Brazil, urban areas are characterized not by individual cities but as metropolitan regions, often grouping together millions of citizens across the borders of multiple municipal governments. Recent metropolitan-led policies such as participatory planning have led to a rise of a metropolitan identity among citizens. Learn about the role of data in metropolitan policymaking in Brazil.
Read MoreHow can national statistics systems evolve to leverage the data revolution?
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