Page 87 - Proceedings of the 2017 ITU Kaleidoscope

Challenges for a data-driven society

6. DISCUSSION AND RECOMENDATIONS analytics. While businesses use big data to inform business
decisions and strategy, governments use big data to provide
There is a clear need for reliable information within the better service delivery and citizen engagement [39].
international statistical community, and there have been a Initiatives on small data (in which data, instead of being
number of efforts to ensure quality and accuracy of data. aggregated is processed at the same unit as it was sampled
However, the process is long and technology is changing [40]) are also important to make sure nobody is left out.
rapidly, directly affecting the lives of human beings and in The model proposed in this paper integrates both, the big
turn, the data they produce. Therefore, reliability must be and the small data approaches to promote inclusiveness.
safeguarded by robust and mature organizations which are
independent of their employees, and the current and future 7. CONCLUSIONS
administrations. To this end, national statistical systems
must be empowered to quickly and easily adapt to the new This paper advocates the achievement of the sustainable
reality of data. development agenda through interventions towards
improving the capabilities of the entities within the national
International organizations play an important role in data ecosystem responsible for monitoring its progress. By
supporting countries in being able to produce reliable and the adoption of an organization thinking approach, this
efficient indicators, and in providing them with adequate research motivates for the adoption and mainstreaming of
tools for achieving so. For instance, UNECE is making CMMs within the SDGs activities.
great contributions with the development of GAMSO,
GSBPM, GSIM, CSPA. There is space however, for other The main contributions of this paper are: a thorough
organizations to also make a contribution. definition and the problematization of a space where
research and actions are urgently needed, the preliminary
Every country, regardless of their advancement and level of formulation of a multidimensional prescriptive CMM to
development can benefit from the CMM. While developed assess and improve the maturity of organizations within
countries tend to lead the way and have more resources for national data ecosystems, and a set of recommendations
improvement and innovation, developing countries can towards addressing the challenges within the increasingly
benefit greatly from the efforts and experience gained from data-driven domain of social indicators monitoring.
those leading the way. The achievement of the global Furthermore, and aiming at reaching globally accepted
development agenda is not a competition among countries standards, an extensive review that describes the landscape
and it depends on every member to be able to achieve its of the current initiatives on improving social statistics was
goals and targets. One of the beliefs and principles of the also presented. This contribution can be helpful for
SDGs states that "The United Nations member states work informing statistics institutions of the domain of tools and
together with a high level of cooperation to improve the platforms available. Gaps and overlaps were also identified,
circumstances of all people in the world, and place them at and the lack of integration among these efforts, leading to a
the core of future development" [38, p. 1]. poor utilization of current and previous investments, was
highlighted.
The model proposed in this paper is targeted to the SDGs in
particular, and to the social indicators for the public good in Future work includes an in-depth review of case studies to
general. Practices and solutions taken from the private identify best practices for the production of statistics for
sector have to be analyzed and adapted carefully since their development, and further development of the CMM by
priorities and goals are different. As an example, while integration the findings of this survey.
developmental indicators pay attention to inclusion (no one
should be invisible) and respect for the privacy of REFERENCES
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