Article: Flashy innovations will not fuel the data revolution

Co-lead of the Post-2015 Data Test, Shannon Kindornay, highlights why national statistics offices must be at the heart of the data revolution, and will require long term investments and support to integrate new partnerships and technological innovations in a recent article published by SciDev.Net.

The global data shake-up has to be driven by national priorities and long-term investment, saysShannon Kindornay.

Calls for a data revolution to inform the post-2015 sustainable development agenda have been met with commitments, made at the Addis Ababa Financing for Development summit last month, to invest in national statistical systems, make greater use of unofficial data including big data, and adopt technological innovations to support data collection, analysis and dissemination.

These could all fill existing data gaps, improve public services and broaden partnerships. But as commitments turn into on-the-ground initiatives, the data revolution must become rooted in national priorities and realities.

And rather than the technological innovations that claim the data revolution spotlight, in many countries this will require something less flashy: considerable investments in long-term statistical infrastructure and capacity development.

Read the full article here.

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