Tony German, Development Initiatives
- HLP and SG’s human dignity report mapped out a vision for global goals which can end poverty by 2030
- Every vision needs a plan and a budget – and as the HLP has said, a data revolution is vital to delivering on the plan - and ensuring the budget is spent effectively and accountably
- At present we don’t even have good data on people who are poor. Poverty estimates depend on household surveys. 6 of Africa’s 49 countries have no survey data at all. Another 15 countries rely on surveys more than 7 years old! We need to know how growth is reaching the poor. National accounts data from India shows annual consumption per person rising from $1200 in 2004 to $1600 in 2009. But household survey data shows a rise from $600 per person to $700 per person over the same period. Both can’t be right.
- How can we tell if money invested in education for girls and women is making an impact if we don’t have gender disaggregated data?
- In Brazil the government has a registry with details of 21 million poor families. It knows who it is targeting, where they live, what they live on and what services they need. This registry (this data) has been key to Brazil’s progress in reducing poverty from 26 million in 1990 to 12 million in 2009. It means Brazil’s ambition of eliminating poverty by 2015 is a plan, not a just a wish.
- At present donors, developing country governments and civil society monitoring aid mostly have to rely on aggregate data that is up to 2 years out of date. How are countries expected to plan and budget with old and incomplete data? In Malawi we found the government had no knowledge of about one third of incoming assistance. About 40 countries have gone to the trouble and expense of setting up their own DADs or AMPs to track inflows. The fact is that IT now means we can and should be providing geocoded, transaction level data on spending in close to real time. Companies are doing this routinely. Aid agencies need to catch up.
- The MDGs have provided a focus for action and have delivered real progress. But they have mainly focused on delivery of services rather than empowerment. So post 2015 global goals will deliver more if a data revolution is part of the mix.
- Better information can underpin better coordination – between government and donors – and between donors. (Examples of duplication of donor funded projects alongside and poorly coordinated with developing country plans). Better coordination will lead to more country ownership and more efficient spending.
- Access to info empowers at every level – it means parliamentarians and citizens can track how resources are allocated and how commitments are delivered (underpinning accountability and participation). Example Muhuri video on the CDF in Kenya, ‘Its our money, where’s it gone?’.
- Statistics are too important to be left to statisticians alone! We need investment in statistics and how data is presented so that it can be used. At present, spending on data is too easily dismissed as bean counting or administration. In fact data is a key tool for planning how resources are allocated and ensuring that commitments are delivered. Only 0.3% of aid is spent on supporting statistical systems. So politicians who determine priorities need to prioritise data and the capacity to apply it. Statisticians need to recognise that slow and patchy data, however well validated, is not good enough. And we all need to work out how to best combine crowd sourced feedback and information with traditional data. Parliamentarians and civil society need to focus on how we can all become better at using the new information that comes from the data revolution – to monitor how well resources are being applied to the people who most need them.