World Bank releases “World Development Report – 2021”

It is a blueprint on how to harness the power of data for development across world

• The World Bank released World Development Report 2021 with the theme Data for Better Lives
• The World Development Report 2021 provides a blueprint on how to harness the power of data for development, to ensure no one is left behind
• It examines tremendous potential and risks of changing data landscape for people living in lower income countries

Key highlights from the report

• An explosion of data platform businesses is raising concern about competition and posing new challenges for regulation
• Only 11% low-income countries make their data open (Not Accessible To General Public or research institution), the report flagged
• The comparable rate for lower-middle-income countries was 19%, for upper-middle-income countries 22% and high-income countries 44%
• Only half the countries had a national statistical plan that was fully funded as of 2019. While 93% of high-income countries had a fully funded national statistical plan, not a single low-income country had one
• Unable to harness the potential of data due to a lack of institutions, decision-making autonomy, and financial resources, all of which hold back their effective implementation and effectiveness of data systems and governance frameworks
• Gaps In Data On Women and Girls are particularly severe: Only 10 of the 54 gender-specific indicators (19%) in the United Nations-mandated sustainable development goals (SDGs) were widely available
• Making data accessible to more users and creating systems that facilitate their reuse also opens the door for data to be misused in ways that can harm individuals or development objectives
• The report also flagged concerns over protection of personal data; misinformation; and attacks on software, networks and data systems
• There are major gaps evident between rich and poor people on broadband connectivity, and a substantial divide emerging between rich and poor countries when it comes to the availability of data infrastructure

The data report in India

• Echoed concerns on assessment of global poverty by the World Bank, which has been skewed due to absence of data on poverty from India
• India monitors 54 out of the 130 SDG indicators. While the overall number of monitored indicators has gone up, the country has dropped four indicators from its tracking list
• The National Policy is expected to increase the accessibility and easier sharing of non-sensitive data amongst the registered users and their availability for scientific, economic and social developmental purposes

Open Government Data (OGD) Platform

• To provision an enabling Platform to provide proactive and open access to the data generated
• To increase Transparency, Accountability, Citizen Engagement, Collaboration, Better Governance, Decision making & Innovation
• Paradigm Shift in Governance – Direct Delivery of Services to Citizens, Setting up a Platform for Collaboration, Innovation in delivery of Services to Citizens

Recommendations of the Report

• New Social Contract for Data: Global South experts recommend that different stakeholders like civil society and academia, are key to help in improving transparency and contribute towards development
• Increase Data use to Realize Value: The experts also flagged gaps in understanding data and its governance in developing contexts. So, they recommend that efforts should be made to improve data literacy and expand access for all specially, the vulnerable groups
• Equitable access: The experts raised concerns on how public and private systems for data do not capture poor people or vulnerable groups. So, it recommends, marginalized people need a better representation across data systems
• Protect people from data misuse: Experts further recommends on issues related to governance arrangements and systems using which data flow so as to ensure that they are safe, ethical and secure
• Integrated national data systems: Experts further highlight difficulties for countries which are suffering from poverty, fragility and poor governance in designing high-quality data systems. So, they recommend for increased investments in physical and human capital to have integrated national data systems