Building trust with communities

Building trust with communities

Trust has emerged as both a challenge and a currency in this work." 

— Karen Bett, Program & Policy Lead, Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data

Through MIDN, participants learned that trust isn’t implicit; it needs to be earned and then maintained. Building strong relationships with communities takes time and care, particularly when people will be asked to share sensitive information. It’s important to respect cultural sensitivities, anticipate understandable concerns around data privacy, communicate clearly how data will be used and stored, and explain how it will help inform better policies and improve lives.

Embodying the true principles of co-creation is key and helps create a sense of shared ownership and responsibility. For example, traditional leaders were present at Ghana’s national validation workshop, to evaluate findings on the data gaps around FGM, and joined the call for data-driven approaches to FGM. Their presence reinforced the importance of community involvement at every stage of the development process for the successful adoption and buy-in of new tools and approaches, and to drive cultural change. 

Making collaboration work

Through the learning exchanges, Colombia’s DANE shared that their initial attempts to engage with civil society (through sending mass emails or online forms) fell flat; they had to go back to the drawing board and find new ways of reaching out that were more personalized, tailored, and resonant, and to "speak in the language of activists rather than statisticians," in order for this communication to be welcomed rather than met with skepticism. 

At first, we failed to connect. We need to move away from the idea that the NSO has all the answers. Data represents people, and therefore data needs to be humanized." 

— DANE, Colombia's National Statistical Office

Instead, building trust between DANE and civil society organizations required moving beyond email consultations to genuine co-creation, a shift that involved conducting 13 workshops over two years in multiple cities rather than relying on desk-based feedback mechanisms. Bridging the language gap between technical statistical terminology and community vocabularies required DANE to develop accessible materials and invest time in mutual learning, ensuring that communities could meaningfully engage without requiring advanced statistical training.

These participatory approaches have helped to build lasting relationships. Colombia’s App Diversa, designed to tackle discrimination and improve public services, was co-created with citizens to ensure the data collection process would be relevant, sensitive, and useful. This included extensive validation sessions with representatives from LGBTIQ+, Afro-Colombian, indigenous, and youth communities, to guide the questions and user experience. 

Citizen data quality

Inclusion can't live at the margins of statistical practice; it must be embedded into data systems and strategies. This is essential to maintain quality standards for new and citizen-powered data sources, ensuring that the data is both inclusive and reliable. Kenya’s work to institutionalize inclusive data offers important lessons and inspiration on this. Through a collaboration with the SDG Kenya Forum, KNBS revised its citizen data quality criteria and formally integrated them into its statistical frameworks through the Kenya Statistical Quality Assurance Framework (KeSQAF). This was as much a political exercise as a technical one, demonstrating a public commitment to valuing data from civil society as well as traditional sources. The two organizations also signed a Memorandum of Understanding to work together to champion inclusive data.

Quality assurance frameworks should not be barriers, but rather tools that help communities use data in useful ways while still being statistically sound. Training and capacity building is also key. Through partnerships with the Open Institute, Kenya is rolling out online and in-person training that prioritizes inclusion throughout the curriculum, rather than as a standalone module.