Last modified: 2016-09-13
Abstract
Email: cezigbalike@uneca.org, lngogangwandji@uneca.org, pnjagi@uneca.org
Key Words: Data Revolution, Data Communities, Volunteered Geographic Information, Citizens; SDGs, Official Statistics
As defined in the African Data Consensus (ADC), the data revolution is “… [The] process of embracing a wide range of data communities and diverse range of data sources, tools, and innovative technologies, to provide disaggregated data for decision-making, service delivery and citizen engagement; and information for Africa to own its narrative.”
The data revolution envisaged a (new) partnership involving governments, civil society, development partners and, most importantly, citizens. The concomitant emphasis on leaving no one behind require that all actors, stakeholders and beneficiaries should have access to relevant information to play their respective roles in the development process, including implementation, monitoring and reporting on progress.
These partnership and inclusive aspects are already at the core of spatial data infrastructures. The emphasis of the SDGs, in which context the data revolution was introduced, on disaggregation of data on several topics, but especially (gender and) geography, makes geospatial data indispensable for the data revolution. It is therefore imperative that two concepts should converge, and this paper argues, and proposes strategies, for this convergence.
The paper will review different definitions and concepts of data revolution and explain the rationale behind the definition proposed in the African Data Consensus. The ADC introduced the concept of data communities, as a way of dealing with ensuring that professional communities and stakeholders, who understand particular data themes, are given the mandate to produce them. The paper will establish the similarities between this concept and the custodianship principle of SDIs.
The data revolution presents the opportunity to open up the “data ecosystem” to more actors to be involved in providing data, including citizens. This opportunity however, raises a challenge with regards to the legal frameworks underpinning the production and dissemination of data and statistics. Even though Principle 5 of the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics stipulates that data for statistical purposes may be drawn from all types of sources, it still falls short of the full involvement of other actors implied by the data revolution. Another opportunity presented by the data revolution is in technology. Advances in information and communication technologies now allow data to be amassed from unexpected sources, processed in previously unimagined ways, and presented in new formats and media to wider audiences. These new approaches are now being incorporated into statistical systems that are being transformed and modernized. Notable among the innovations in data collection and dissemination are the use of mobile devices for data collection, and the potential for big data as a source of statistics.
This form of data provisioning is already established in the geospatial information community in the form of Volunteer Geographic Information (VGI). The paper will examine how VGI is being incorporated into SDIs for lessons for the statistical offices that are expected to continue to coordinate the expanding data ecosystems.