If you own an electronic gadget, you must read this

If you have any electronic gadget, you need to read this blog post. 

Here, I first seek to explain as simply as possible how the emerging concept of Big Data can help us sort out some of the problems we face today. 

Secondly, I seek to show you that you are a major actor in the production of data you cannot ignore. 

My purpose is to show you that your mobile phone or computer provides other people with your digital footprint, which they use to advance their businesses without your knowledge. 

You have the right to know, the right to privacy but also a right to a guarantee that the data you produce merely by going about your daily lives will be put to use for your benefit. That said, let me now tell you the genesis of my blog post today.

Last week, I attended the first UN World Data Forum as one of the speakers. 

The forum was hosted by Statistics South Africa, with support from the Statistics Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

The objective of the meeting, among others, was to bring together stakeholders to explore innovative ways to apply data and statistics to measure global progress and to inform evidence-based policy decisions on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Unfortunately, data has been politicised. National statistics offices think they should have a monopoly on data while civil society thinks the state sometimes tampers with data to suit its political agenda. 

While NGOs and multilateral agencies argue that government policy should be informed by use of data, the private sector thinks data is a competitive advantage resource that should be secret.

DATA FROM ALL CORNERS

New technologies like mobile phones and computers generate more robust data than the state does through sampling methods. 

For example, if you want to understand financial inclusion better, mobile money companies have better and more accurate data than any state can collect. Mobile companies’ data can provide better estimate of inflation than the usual method of a basket of goods. 

In effect, the emerging data revolution in which all of us are players has far greater implications than we can imagine. This is the reason you must know a lot about Big Data.

The UN has noted the importance of data in helping countries meet the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Hopefully, through meetings such as the one in Cape Town, we can address critical data gaps and encourage a collaborative environment that is lacking at the moment. 

In the ongoing disruption, data is coming from all corners, including the private and public sectors, NGOs and even civil society.

Although everyone recognises it will be in the people’s interest to use every source of data to deal with the problems facing us, the change is being resisted. 

Some are selfishly protecting the status quo from where they benefit by cooking up data. Others fear that they may be rendered irrelevant.

This anxiety is itself a consequence of an imminently uncertain future. Others resist out of malice because perhaps they hate change.   

REAL-TIME FEEDBACK

The 2000–2015 Millennium Development (MDGs) measurements needed just the traditional survey and census data collected on paper, and owned and used by governments. 

The SDG measurements will be produced by people directly, collected in real-time by machines, and owned by corporations.

It is a fragmented data landscape in which to implement a challenging agenda, complicated further by the fact that we live in a fast-changing, networked world in which our linear organisational processes are no longer enough. 

Robert Kirkpatrick from the UN’s Global Pulse says, “Using three-year-old data to make plans and then periodically measuring progress must be complemented by real-time feedback on what is working, what isn’t and why, and by the ability to peer into the future to spot emerging risks and take action to prevent setbacks.” 

He noted further that, like open data, it will be a force for empowerment.

Government survey data collected three years earlier, perhaps by the previous administration, isn’t nearly as actionable as information about what is happening right now, or predictive analytic models that use past and present information to predict what is coming. 

Like open data, it will be a powerful platform for grassroots innovation. Big data is native digital: it is generated by technology, stored in the cloud, and useful only through the power of analytics. 

Hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent by the private sector to collect new kinds of data and then turning it into business value. These new data, tools and analytical methodologies can in many cases be repurposed for development and humanitarian action.

ANONYMISING AND SHARING

But none of this will happen in time to achieve the SDGs unless we come together now, as a community, to address critical gaps. I enumerated a few in my speech:

a)  We need new policy frameworks. Safe and responsible use of big data is about more than privacy protection — it’s also about making sure that whenever possible, big data is used to drive progress toward sustainable development and protect the vulnerable from harm.

This will require regulators, companies with data and potential users of innovative data-driven solutions to work together on a new approach.

b)  The private sector has to step up — and come together — around data philanthropy. As many of you are aware, the mobile industry has already begun to explore how to put insights from the big data produced by mobile phones to work for the public good.

However, there are no industry-wide standards for anonymising and sharing this data, and few examples of enterprise-ready applications that put the power of this data in the hands of a ministry of health, labour, or transportation. 

Efforts are under way to change this, and they need further investment, and other industries such as banking, e-commerce, and transportation should follow suit in figuring out how to unlock the power of their data in a way that is scalable and sustainable.

c)  Civil society needs to recognise big data for what it is: an issue of rights. Citizens need to recognise that just as they have a right to data privacy, they also have a right to a guarantee that the data they produce merely by going about their daily lives will be put to use for their benefit.

Alongside current efforts to inform the public about what data is collected from them and the risks it poses to their privacy, they also need to be made aware of the opportunity cost they pay every year in terms of social, economic and environmental progress because our policies and programmes aren’t taking advantage of that same data to work smarter.

Unlike many of the UN member states, African countries are at a critical stage where poverty is ravaging their people. There is massive unemployment and faltering healthcare and education. 

We cannot afford to quibble about the emerging methodologies that provide real-time data to measure progress toward the achievement of the SDGs.

The writer is an associate professor at the University of Nairobi’s School of Business. @bantigito