Plenary | Enabling Innovations for Data Empowerment: A Vision for the Future
Covid amplified inequalities and highlighted the need for organizations to strengthen the data ecosystem in India. It is imperative that NGOs come together as a community to share and learn in order to create a sustainable impact on vulnerable communities.
Data can be used as a force for societal good, where communities are at the centre of all data solutions- it is critical for India to leverage data to bring ecosystem leaders together to rebuild communities via inclusive and participatory solutions
Data can be used as a force for societal good, where communities are at the centre of all data solutions- it is critical for India to leverage data to bring ecosystem leaders together to rebuild communities via inclusive and participatory solutions
What does data mean to you all?
CHALLENGES FACED IN DATA EMPOWERMENT
ON ADDRESSING DATA CHALLENGES
BEST PRACTICES/WAY FORWARD
- Data is something that is accessible to all.
- It is knowledge that help organizations strive towards their goals amidst intended and unintended consequences
CHALLENGES FACED IN DATA EMPOWERMENT
- Currently it is constrained given the massive digital divide and existing social norms that cause gender bias, even in data. E.g Sim cards are owned in the name of men, 56% women are allowed to use the phones, men usually recharge the data, which limits a woman’s accessibility thus creating a huge bias.
- Economic differences due to societal hierarchies: Critical manage equity amongst different economic groups when sharing data.
- Data push v/s pull: Often NGOs engage with communities to only push data in the form of surveys which is far from participatory.
- Inaccurate, inaccessible, and misleading data ecosystem: CSOs often find it difficult to identify their contribution and value to the existing data wrt GDP footprint, value add to communities etc. as the factoids are offered without clarity, and often contains dated data.
ON ADDRESSING DATA CHALLENGES
- Adopt a participatory approach when engaging with communities to gather data; More participatory the process, more inclusive and democratic the data offering long term data solutions
- Balance scaling up with standardizing your data solutions, but also acknowledging the local nuances
- Incentivize organizations to collective outcomes, and share data via central data repository; ownership should be shared between all stakeholders equally (corporates, CSOs, govt.)
- Rationalize existing data, invest in an ecosystem to allow for thoughtful creation of data, and build capacity to understand how data can best serve the communities
BEST PRACTICES/WAY FORWARD
- Critical to build an ecosystem of service providers that offer services with a good understanding of what type of data exists, the principles & values of data and those that own it.
- Investment to streamline official govt. data doesn’t require too much investment wrt making it coherent. Imperative to make it accessible and more coherent moving forward.
- Design stage gates for collating data to understand when human involvement is mandatory wrt data collection as opposed to automatable data collection
- Data needs to be looked from both, human and technology lens. Technology is not enough to enable participatory data collection and curation.