Turning more data into better information: The Role of Joined-Up Data Standards in Meeting and Monitoring the SDGs
The new Open Data Charter, which is getting its second launch in Mexico this week, provides a launch pad for an assault on the silos of disconnected data that dot the information landscape of resource flows and socio-economic indicators. As its preamble notes: “When data can be effectively combined and compared, it can help highlight trends, identify social and economic challenges and inequities, and benchmark progress in public programs and services”.
Under principle four of the charter, signatories pledge to “engage with domestic and international standards bodies and other standard setting initiatives to encourage increased interoperability between existing international standards, support the creation of common, global data standards where they do not already exist, and ensure that any new data standards we create are, to the greatest extent possible, interoperable with existing standards”.
Joining-up data on aidMore and better information about aid helps partner countries and donor institutions plan and manage aid resources more effectively, parliaments and civil society to hold governments accountable for t..., contracts, budgets, humanitarian assistance and other development-related data offers an exciting new frontier for open dataBy opening up data and making it sharable and reusable, governments can enable informed debate, better decision making, and the development of innovative new services. Technical specifications: Polici... and its ability to support efforts to tackle global development issues. Working together, the communities around data standards can encourage user-centric design in the creation of standards and share common methodologies and coding systems in fields such as geospatial data, functional sectors and organisational, corporate and demographic identifiers.
Collaboration on areas such as these can mean that data is more comparable across different standards. This could enable easier tracing of, for example development cooperation flows, following them from donors, through implementing partners, to recipient governments and procurement systems, and even down to the beneficiary level.
As the SDGs enter the implementation phase, the need to join up data standards to improve their tracking is more pressing than ever before. We look forward to furthering the discussion on how to harness the potential of joined-up data to achieve this with you at the OGP Summit.
On Wednesday, 28th October 2015, from 3-4pm a panel moderated by Martin Tisnė, Policy Director at the Omidyar Network, will discuss The Role of Joined-Up Data Standards in Meeting and Monitoring the SDGs. Through a series of lightning talks, attendees will be able to hear the views of expert speakers from a variety of standpoints, including government, open data standard setters and civil society. You are welcome to join the session and contribute your views on how to make more data into better information by enhancing the comparability and interoperability of data standards. To sign up for the event, and for details of our speakers, see the OGP Summit 2015 Schedule.