🌐 Examples

Botswana and Tunisia both decided to invite major stakeholders to workshops in 2024. In each country, the mobile network operators, the regulator, the data protection authority, and the NSO took part in high-level and technical workshops. 

  • The high-level workshops, which lasted for a half-day, worked well to set the stage for the more technical workshops to be fruitful. Decision-makers were able to offer support to the project and offer guidance on topics that should be developed more fully before data sharing decisions could be made. 
  • During the technical workshops, the business questions of data sharing arrangements were discussed extensively, allowing the NSO to prepare a fully developed project concept note.

The Dominican Republic and Uruguay have also convened all major stakeholder groups to one room to discuss the rationale, global examples, support, and business technical questions. In all of the countries, the workshops had a positive impact on the project.

  • On May 27, 2022, an international workshop titled Use of Mobile Phone Data was held in Montevideo, Uruguay, organized by the Regulatory Unit of Communications Services (URSEC), the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, and the National Institute of Statistics (INE). 
  • The workshop aimed to showcase the opportunities in using mobile network data for policy and national development, and discuss the potential of collaborations with mobile network operators, INE, and URSEC in Uruguay. International representatives from Estonia and Spain shared their experiences. 
  • The workshop concluded by emphasizing the importance of collaboration among various stakeholders to leverage the data for official statistics and for formulating effective public policies.  

❗Tips

✅ Aim to get a clear RSVP to the workshop from main stakeholders ahead of time. Note that invitations can get misplaced, and the parties don’t want to find out they are invited at the last minute.

✅ Start the workshop with an overview of the potential applications, methods, data sources, and data sharing models of other countries before discussions start.

✅ While some international speakers can make online statements (e.g. other country representatives and international organizations), there should be enough outside expertise in the room with knowledge of successful country practices to validate discussions.

✅ Lay the foundation by conducting risk mapping with the stakeholders. Brainstorming ideas, for example via the K-J Method (or Affinity Mapping), is a simple and effective way to surface top concerns. The objective of risk mapping with stakeholders is to map out major concerns and rank them by order of importance. The main identified risks are then used as the basis for discussing solutions.

✅ Always address and fully discuss the main risks that stakeholders identify. Although decision-makers might not be in the room, collaborative problem-solving can often come to the right conclusions regarding solutions.

📖 Resources

See an overview and documents linked to the event and workshop held by Tunisia here.

⏩ Next actions

  • Identify the expertise to prepare the content for the high-level and technical workshops.

  • Create a workshop concept note and invite relevant speakers.

  • Settle the workshop venue, timings, content, and roles.

  • Distribute pre-event materials, including workshop agenda, background material, and, if relevant, a survey.

  • Prepare workshop content with team members including presentations and case studies.

  • Elicit RSVP from each invited stakeholder.

  • Hold the high-level workshop.

  • Hold the technical workshop.

  • Create a detailed project concept note based on the discussions.