The Future of Data for Development

Andreas Pawelke, Lejla Sadiku Digital data offers manifold
opportunities to development. It enables organizations
and individuals to strengthen decision-making processes,
improve service delivery and elicit meaningful citizen
participation, among others. At the same time, it generates new
forms of exclusion, new methods of surveillance and threatens
individual privacy. A recently published study is
looking into the current state of data for development
and emerging trends. For each of the six trends identified in the
research, there are negative and positive potential scenarios as
they unfold within the next years. For instance, more sources of
data can make the development sector more agile, but may open
opportunities for surveillance and threats to individual privacy.
Artificial intelligence offers novel ways of tackling development
problems, but in some cases, algorithms have proven to be biased,
opaque and out of reach of scrutiny. While opening and sharing data
between partners can serve the public good, this can also threaten
citizen privacy due to the technical challenges of fully
anonymising data. In this session, we will present the key findings
of the study, provide practical examples of how digital data is
being used in development and engage the audience in a discussion
on the potential negative and positive scenarios of increased
reliance on data to achieve development impact. supported by BMZ