A new website aggregating dozens of datasets assessing different aspects of governance was introduced March 1 by the Global Data Alliance, which also announced the results of a study about what data is influential and who’s listening.
The most influential dataset was the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, according to the responses to an international survey by AidData of more than 4,000 government officials, civil society actors and others in 126 low and middle-income countries.
Data produced by intergovernmental organizations, however, was more influential that data done by governments or nongovernmental organization, the researchers found.
Data paired with actionable agenda was more influential, the study reports, and assessments based on primary data and local knowledge were more influential than those based on secondary data. The influence of governance data was highest in Europe and Central Asia, and lowest in South Asia, according to the research.
Samantha Custer, AidData’s director of policy analysis, said it was “sobering” that government officials and CSO activists were the ones least familiar with governance data. She the here main take-aways were to focus on making assessment content actionable, to deepen the participation of domestic actors and to contextualize dissemination strategies. Further research is under way.
The two-year-old Global Data Alliance has four main areas of work: encouraging peer to peer learning on producing good data, studying how data users’ preferences can be met, creating the data dashboard and experimenting with how to coordinate field work efforts.
The dashboard consolidates almost two-dozen existing datasets. It permits country-specific searching and country comparisons. Not all of the datasets rate country performance the same way, but for the dashboard most of the originators coded the scores based on a five-point color-coded scale.
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