Project Description
One of the requirements for all member countries of the UN is to invariably provide the organisation with data for a variety of indicators. The dynamic this causes, along with what UN agencies do with this data, is complex and fascinating. In 2016 I was commissioned by WHO to review their approach to data in one of their 6 big regional offices that oversaw 37 countries and territories. The project analysed how the organisation:
- Talked with countries about data
- Received data from countries
- Validated the data they received
- Imported data
- Warehoused and managed data
- Analysed data
- Visualised, shared, published and made data available in different ways
Essentially, the project was to report on the entire relationship towards, and life cycle of, data throughout the organisation.
Over a number of months I interviewed staff and external stakeholders as well as spent weeks with my team from Lantern looking through their hardware and software configurations and processes. I analysed their staffing capabilities and capacity and reflected my findings across various externally and internally imposed goals and mandates stated by the organisation.
These findings were put into a large report along with an executive summary which Cabinet could use to discuss.
Following this, I was asked to advise on options and implications for next steps. Again coordinating with a variety of stakeholders, I sought to develop advice that would be both reliable and achievable. I developed this advice also keeping in mind the broader UN data ecosystem. To ensure this fit, I talked with country offices, regional WHO technical units and WHO HQ, as well as key internal departments such as IT and Communications.
Following this advice I was asked to run a procurement project to find the best global partner to achieve their goals as well as test the market on how much this would cost.
It was a fun project to work on and provided a unique opportunity to see how WHO deals with data at a variety of levels. Of particular interest to me were the interviews conducted with various country offices, government staff, civil societies and academics about what they would ideally want from an organisation like WHO in regards to data. I also enjoyed conversations with these professionals about which organisations were doing data well and why that was the case.
The project reinforced to me how important data is in development and how much opportunity there is out there to leverage existing datasets to help countries.
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