Global Data Facility News Today

Craig Hammer is a Senior Program Manager with the Development Data Group at the World Bank. He specializes in governance reforms, and in particular on open

Gender data are key to achieving gender equality and a form of empowerment for women and girls around the world. At the global level, gender data enables policy makers and businesses to take evidence-based decisions that increase women’s well-being, access to economic opportunities and overall development outcomes.

The datafication of agriculture promises better yields, reduced food loss and waste, and more farmers receiving fair pay for what they produce. This is potentially great news for the 570 million smallholder farmers worldwide whose production accounts for...

When COVID-19 hit the Gambia, the government was well-prepared to respond effectively. Thanks to a private-public sector project, anonymized big data from cellphone towers allowed policymakers to analyze migration patterns by tracking population...

Some say statistics is easy: you simply count. The observation that statistics is in essence counting is not wrong—what is wrong is the belief that counting is straightforward. Producing official statistics requires enormous effort, a commitment to being methodical...

Statistics are at the core of modern decision-making. They tell policymakers how many people are in the hospital, how the economy is doing, and by how much CO2 emissions are ascending. In the past year, their importance rose as official...

The third UN World Data Forum, held from 3-6 October in Bern, Switzerland, resulted in the Bern Data Compact for the Decade of Action on the SDGs. The Bern Compact calls for commitments in five areas: develop data capacity, establish data partnerships, produce data to leave no one behind, understand the world with data, and build trust in data. In the Compact, participants recognize the need for “fit-for-purpose” data to achieve the 2030 Agenda, with each data ecosystem stakeholder playing t...

When the COVID-19 pandemic first broke out, national statistical offices (NSOs) around the world acted to suspend face-to-face interviews and asked staff to work from home, even though many lacked adequate technology for remote work.