The World Development Report (WDR) is the World Bank’s annual guide to the economic, social, and environmental state of the world today. It has been published since 1978. 2021’s WDR will focus on data, and the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data was invited to be a part of their consultation process.
On Wednesday, June 3 we hosted a consultation webinar, alongside the WDR team. It provided a space to understand diverse perspectives on this critical development issue. The webinar ran twice to allow participation from different time zones.
This event has passed. You can now watch the webinar #1 and webinar #2 recordings.
All three WDR 2021 Co-Directors joined the webinar (Bob Cull, Vivien Foster, and Dean Joliffe), as well as Malarvizhi Veerappan, who is managing the report. Our CEO, Claire Melamed, moderated the conversation and several of our partners provided direct input:
- Webinar #1 -- Lisa Bersales (Professor of Statistics, University of the Philippines’ School of Statistics), Aidan Eyakuze (Executive Director, Twaweza), and Kieran Sharpey-Schafer (Managing Partner, Palindrome Data)
- Webinar #2 -- Aidan Eyakuze (ED, Twaweza), Deepa Karthykeyan (Co-Founder and Director, Athena Infonomics), and Ana Patricia Muñoz (Executive Director, Grupo Faro)
The concept note discussed how the value of data is largely untapped, lays out the conceptual framework to help guide our thinking, and reflects on the current data landscape and the environment needed to enable the use and reuse of data while safeguarding against misuse.
The consultation gathered input from the audience on the following topics/questions:
- Examples of how data have directly helped to improve the lives of poor people in your community
- What are examples of policies or tools that effectively safeguard against the misuse of data and prevent harm, while enabling us to untap its full value to benefit the wellbeing of people?
- What data governance and policy reforms are needed for less developed countries to benefit from the data economy?
Thank you to all who joined this important conversation and helped us ensure our collective voice enriched the process.
