How can we eliminate the data deficit?

What do water and big data have in common?  First, they both save lives. Every day we use data to support development challenges and crises around the world. In Kenya, data helped track and manage a malaria outbreak; in the Philippines, it helped improve the effectiveness of aid and relief efforts after Typhoon Haiyan.

Second, data and water are both bountiful, yet rarely ready for easy consumption or found where they are most needed. The developed world has a deluge and the developing world a deficit, of both. In the developed world – i.e the global north – data is a bountiful luxury used to track everything from unemployment levels to sleep patterns and the route to your favourite shop. In the developing world (the south), on the other hand, access to data – just like quality of water – is often strictly managed, poorly regulated and largely controlled by commercial entities.

The opportunity for the global south

The way I see it, there’s a huge opportunity for the global south to leverage data to meet their unique and growing challenges. Today, data flows are clogged by an entangled set of risks, uncertainties and competing interests – the largest of which is a lack of private sector participation. In order to cut through the complex network of concerns surrounding data, we must find a meaningful and pragmatic way forward through risk management – a tool most business are quite familiar with.

Risk management enables classes of concerns to be better understood, prioritized and mitigated. With the risk management step in place, we can begin to untangle some of the complexities and uncertainties in the data ecosystem. A better understanding of the risks associated with using data for the social good can enable policy-makers to develop frameworks which are outcome-based and proportionate, and that strengthen socio-economic benefits while protecting fundamental rights.

Risk management tools could enable businesses to move beyond uncertainty over legal and regulatory environments, operational barriers, and intellectual capital and privacy concerns. With those barriers lifted, they could fully harness data to drive socio-economic development. In essence, if they are to make well-informed decisions about the use of data for development, both public and private stakeholders need to fully understand the context, the likely benefits and the potential risks.

I know that continued inaction will put more lives at risk during the next natural disaster or the next disease outbreak, and threaten everyone affected by the forthcoming Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Businesses, policy-makers and civil society need to invest in the discipline of risk, strengthen their multilateral engagement and strengthen their data literacy at a local level to ensure optimal impact in data for development.

Risk management practices with agreed-upon principles and data ethics can bring clarity, balance, and a more resilient and trustworthy public-private data-sharing agreements in emerging economies. A better understanding of risks could enable the global south to eliminate the data deficit and fast-forward to an innovative – yet balanced – data-driven economy.

Author: Naveen Menon is Head of Communications, Media and Technology, APAC, at Kearney

Image: Screens are blank at a workplace at the Frankfurt stock exchange. REUTERS/Alex Grimm