Citizen data collected by organizations of persons with disabilities (OPDs) is transforming policies, programs, and access to services for persons with disabilities across 20 villages in Las Piñas, Philippines.
Why OPD-led citizen data matters
Many countries struggle to produce official data disaggregated by disability in censuses and household surveys, especially health surveys in some regions. Where disability data do exist, they are often underused, inaccessible, or not publicly available. At the same time, available datasets rarely reflect the lived experience of persons with disabilities, lack information on access to services, and are not harmonized to support the development of comprehensive, evidence-based, inclusive policies and programs.
When OPDs co-create, co-design, and collect data, more and better information becomes available to drive informed policy change and empower communities.
The Las Piñas initiative
The Las Piñas Persons with Disability Federation, Inc.—a cross-disability barangay-based people’s organization in the Philippines with 16,000 members with disabilities—carried out a data profiling of persons with disabilities in 2022 with support from CBM Global Disability Inclusion. The Federation led citizen data collection across all 20 barangays (villages) in Las Piñas through interviews, in-person surveys, house-to-house interviews, satellite registration for homeowners, and online surveys.
In a few months, the Federation’s data profiling identified 7,221 persons with disabilities and produced comprehensive data, disaggregated by disability, with intersectional aspects, including population, types of disability, age, gender, cause of disability, educational attainment, employment status, voting population, and disability ID status.
Early outcomes with policy impact
The data provided insights and evidence to make government services more inclusive and responsive, and strengthened OPD advocacy, leading to tangible results:
- More than half of the villages established offices for persons with disabilities to improve inclusive services, support[RR1] ,[EL2] and outreach to persons with disabilities who previously had been excluded.
- All 20 villages have a Persons with Disabilities Assistance Desk with a salaried coordinator who is either a person with a disability or a guardian.
- Partnerships between OPDs and local NGOs are helping increase access to disability services.
- OPD-led data efforts with targeted outreach led to an increased number and diversity of persons with disabilities accessing government services.
A scalable solution
The Las Piñas experience shows how OPD-coordinated citizen data can quickly and efficiently close data gaps on persons with disabilities. It offers a practical, replicable model for local governments and national systems. For example, the data profiling exercise was replicated in Eastern Samar in 2024.
And while this is a step in the right direction, there’s more that governments can and should do:
Next steps
- Prioritize disability and intersectional data, including citizen and qualitative data methods to complement traditional statistics and fill critical data gaps.
- Use and align with internationally comparable methods to collect data on persons with disabilities such as the Washington Group on Disability Statistics. This provides important comparability between countries and over time.
- Explore opportunities to increase analysis and uptake of existing disability data.
- Integrate and harmonize disability data collections into national information systems in accessible formats.
- Strengthen data capacity and skills, data governance, and disability awareness for national statistical offices, including enumerators.
More and better data make people visible, enabling evidence-based policymaking so no one is left behind.
