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India is an untapped well of raw information, and to turn that information into data-driven insights that fuel development, we need to ask the right questions. While great progress has already been made, there are still many opportunities to improve how data is collected, presented, and funded. We must address challenges around leveraging data for swift and effective decision-making to drive more efficient allocation of funds, more effective service delivery, higher accountability, and ultimately, more meaningful impact. We need to shift the conversation from data owners to data users and transform our data systems to empower society's most vulnerable through improved awareness, access and agency - to become "first-mile data users".

Data Matters explores the barriers, opportunities, and innovations that exist today within Indian civil society and philanthropy to accelerate this transformation, and rewrite India’s data narrative to be more equitable and empowering.

Bloomberg partnered with Dasra to launch Data for Good Exchange in India in 2021.

Data for Good Exchange forms part of a long Bloomberg tradition of advocacy for using data science and human capital to solve problems at the core of society. Since 2014, Bloomberg has been hosting the annual Data for Good Exchange (D4GX) conference on applications of data science to problems related to the social good. This forum has enabled participants from academia, industry, government, and NGOs to share insights and progress on how best to apply modern machine learning and data science methods to solve problems in the public and non-profit sectors.

Data for Good Exchange India will focus on a series of thought leadership conversations culminating in the D4GX conference. The pandemic has prompted an increased interest among Indian non-profits, funders, and the government to work towards strengthening the data ecosystem for India’s development sector. There is a real need and opportunity to bring together the best of these minds from data, development and philanthropy to not only share and learn from their collective experience but also come together as a community to create and support solutions for greater impact.

Dasra is pleased to partner with Bloomberg and Societal Platform to introduce the Data for Good Exchange in India, further catalysing the efforts of civil society and philanthropists to enable a billion lives to thrive in our country.

The past year has revealed how deeply inequity remains entrenched in India’s development story. The pained voices of millions of displaced migrant workers, children, and abused women remained undetected as mere pixels in the sea of data points we collect. To truly place the vulnerable at the center, the conversation around Data For Good needs to move beyond perfecting operational efficiencies, and towards the true empowerment of the communities we work with.

Through this partnership and the platform we build here, Dasra hopes to focus the data conversation on an end goal that empowers vulnerable communities to demand action, and building a common vision of a data ecosystem that is in the service of data users. The Data for Good Exchange brings together the best minds from civil society, philanthropy, government, and academia to not only share and learn from their collective experience but also to create and support solutions for greater impact.

Societal Platform Thinking is about orchestrating diverse pathways to deal with hard questions such as: How can we create a more inclusive approach to addressing societal issues as they constantly evolve? How can we give people choice and freedom to innovate? How do we build the next generation of open public goods? How do we create spaces for people, intent and technology to come together to give voice and agency to every individual?

Data for Good Exchange initiative presented us with an opportunity to look at data in the service of these hard questions. We strongly believe in the power of ‘open data’ and its ability to orchestrate large-scale and virtuous interactions among samaaj-sarkaar-bazaar (civil society-government-markets).

Through this partnership with Bloomberg and Dasra, we hope to reach out to a wider network of changemakers to co-create a thoughtful data narrative for India and beyond; one that reframes boundaries and constraints, involves communities, builds trust, and works in the service of society. Our endeavour would be to find support, resources and investment to build the data empowerment infrastructure for India and increase our collective ability to sense, make sense, and act to accelerate societal impact.