Better Data Might Cost Huge Chunk Of Global Aid
While the world has generally seen success with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – half the proportion of hunger and poverty, get all kids into school and drastically reduce child mortality – drawn up nearly 15 years ago, not all promises will be achieved.
What is somewhat surprising, however, is that we have fairly little information about what exactly we achieved. According to World Bank data, in 1990 there were 850 maternal deaths out of 100,000 live births in sub-Saharan Africa and this number went down to 500 in 2010. However, the World Health Organization has warned that measuring the maternal mortality ratio remains a challenge as less than 40% of countries have a complete civil registration system that appropriately attributes the cause of death.
Actually, most of the available numbers are rather projections and estimates, not data. In total, there are more gaps than real observations and the observations themselves are often dubious.
This matters, because the world is now discussing a new set of targets for the next decade and a half. To do the most good, my think tank, the Copenhagen Consensus, has asked 60 teams of the world’s top economists to look at the economic, social and environmental costs and benefits of all the top targets. Of course most of the attention is on the high-profile issues like health, education, food, water and environment.
But to be able to measure how well we handle all these issues has real costs. How much this will cost and how much the international community can justify spending in this way is the important topic covered by Professor Morten Jerven in his new paper for the Copenhagen Consensus.
Take the original MDGs. There were just 18 simple targets. Data collection for these targets had many gaps, and much of the information collected was of dubious quality. However, Jerven collates the information we have about survey costs across the world and estimates that the proper monitoring of all 18 targets and 48 indicators would have cost the world $27 billion. That is a significant number, but given that the world will spend about $1.9 trillion over the same period, 1.4% is perhaps not unreasonable to spend on getting information.
The problem is that the next set of targets is growing ever larger. A high-level panel with UK Prime Minister David Cameron, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono from Indonesia and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf along with leaders from civil society and the private sector suggested 59 targets and advocated building “better data-collection systems, especially in developing countries.”
And some months ago, 70 UN ambassadors in the Open Working Group proposed a bewildering 169 targets. One of these argued that by 2020 the world should “increase significantly the availability of high-quality, timely and reliable data disaggregated by income, gender, age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability, geographic location and other characteristics relevant in national contexts.”
Doing even a minimum data collection for all these 169 targets will cost at least $254 billion, or almost twice the entire global annual development budget, Jerven estimates.
And this is a very low estimate, since it does not take account of basic administrative data gathering by national governments, or costs for all the household surveys, which are recommended. And countries where data has not yet been collected will likely prove even costlier. Remember, six of 49 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have never had a household survey and only 28 have had one in the last seven years.
Moreover, there is a serious question of capacity. Worldwide, only about 60 countries have the basic registration systems needed to monitor trends in social indicators. Many poor countries do not have the capacity to collect useful data on a national basis. In the $254 billion estimate there is no allowance for maintaining the statistical office, training and retaining personnel, analyzing along with disseminating the data. There is ample evidence that the MDG agenda has already stretched statistical capacity and strained statistical offices in poor countries and that 169 new targets will only make it much worse.
Most participants discussing the Sustainable Development Goals recognize that we need much, much fewer targets. Taking into account the formidable costs of data collection for each target, it is reasonable to reconsider the best number of targets. For comparison: both the Norwegian and British governments have official statistical services, which cost about 0.2% of their GDP. Using this figure as a measure of willingness to pay would suggest that we should aim more at four SDG targets, which could be properly monitored, rather than a massive 169.
"Outside the Box" Problem Solver
10 年Reading this brought to mind the following question: Might it be better to invest in accurately monitoring welfare and abandon goals altogether? As this article indicates, monitoring social welfare is a costly venture, especially in developing countries where the means are so lacking. But that is the point, or at least a key point. Without accurate metrics of conditions and change, policies in and for developing countries are little better than continual shots in the dark. Alternatively though, with more accurate, complete, and transparent information, development goals might become "emergent" properties, in effect allowing innate social and political aspirations to seek their own adaptive destinations. In one of a number of similar experiments I tracked in the energy conservation arena over the years, researchers found that simply placing electric meters near the entrance to an apartment building, say near the mailboxes, led to reduced energy consumption. That is, simply providing immediate feedback about electricity consumption, and its cost, prompted behavioral adjustments to save money and hence energy. Similarly, in recent years when automobile makers installed meters in vehicles that display fuel efficiency in real time, drivers learned to adjust their driving behavior to achieve greater fuel economy. Focusing on metrics rather than goals does not make the problem of development easy. The challenge still remains to decide what to measure and how -- which can make a great difference. But it shifts attention from the global, macro level to the more granular, indigenous micro level. The objective itself may be simpler: to tie all policy to accounting and hence accountability. In his classic tome on "Management," Peter Drucker was skeptical about the utility of setting performance goals. He viewed goals as more likely to limit performance than to enhance it. In essence, he argued that direction was more important than destination: Decisions should be made daily -- not in some occasional (annual or longer) strategic plan -- with awareness of their "futurity." That is, decisions should drive toward more, better, faster, cheaper, etc. of things that define what a company's business is, constantly considering their future environment and consequences.
Author of 'Genuinely Helpful' | Online Marketing Trainer & Consultant for (Higher) Education Institutions | Europe, Asia & Africa | For effective student recruitment & engagement
10 年If you don't have the data, you can't know whether your policy is working. But too many things to track doesn't just lead to overspending on data collection, it also takes away focus. Improving the quality of data collection should be a priority as a way to strengthen policy making in developing countries and allow us to learn from comparing the effectiveness of different approaches applied globally. If we track 4 SDG targets, improve data collection quality and comparability, and make them publicly available as David Shea mentioned, could greatly improve the way effectiveness of global aid long term. The goal is not to spend as much money possible on aid, but to achieve the best result. That can only be done if we can keep track of results and are able to objectively track best practices.
Big Data is a tool of instrumental reason. It doesn't need terabytes of data to tell us what is fundamentally wrong in the world. If we don't see what the real problems are, it's because we have chosen to ignore them. We are more interested in selling more crap on internet than of fighting injustice, poverty and climate change, for example. I roundly condemn the pimps who encourage us to think this way, with absolutely no consideration for others. They are the new authoritarian lackies.
Associate / Business Intelligence and Reporting - Chief Data Office at Santander Bank, N.A.
10 年As always Bjorn boils it down to the essential problem, 169 shows no ability to prioritize, focusing properly on 4 is completely unacceptable. What about taking the available data and making it easily accessable and letting people use resources like Tableau Public and other open resources to share their insights. Crowdscourcing analysis and then perhaps crowd scourcing solutions may be a non-governmental way to make progress on some of these problems. Passionate people with limited rescources can do good things.
Sr. Director, Insights, Intelligence & Measurement at Proof Strategies Inc.
10 年Agree with the overall premise, that resources should be pumped into that which will produce the most benefit per dollar spent. It's my opinion that any action taken should have measures baked in to provide the information necessary to optimize the program or guide decisions on future allocation of resources. A global census as a standalone project, however, seems like a top-heavy and expensive approach to take. Norway and the UK are able to enjoy their low cost of data because the collection is part and parcel of the overall infrastructure. It seems cart before the horse to try to get this level of information where in many places the infrastructure doesn't yet exist.