“We call for a data revolution for sustainable development, with a new international initiative to improve the quality of statistics and information available to people and governments.”
United Nations High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, May 2013
Truly sustainable development requires a paradigm shift – one in which citizens have a voice. The Big Development DataShift is a bold project to create a new system of monitoring and shaping development progress by Promoting People-Powered Accountability.
New technologies present remarkable opportunities to democratise how information about development is collected, curated, and used. The Big Development DataShift will harness this potential by enhancing coverage of citizen reporting, empowering comparability of data, emancipating tools for campaigning, and Promoting People-Powered Accountability.
The Big Development DataShift seeks to change the global development arena. It is a bottom up approach designed to put citizens at the centre of the development agenda from 2016 and beyond. This journey toward a more people-centred and planet-sensitive world starts with Promoting People-Powered Accountability!
The original Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) provided a pathway to ensure greater accountability by governments on internationally agreed development goals. Yet, when citizens around the world wanted to know the performance on an indicator in a particular country, the only information at our disposal was official data, academic research or expert analysis. As we head towards a new set of global goals on sustainable development, we have an opportunity to create a new way for citizen reporting of progress. The MDGs 2.0 should be accompanied by citizen-monitoring 2.0.
To better understand its role in the data revolution, CIVICUS contracted a scoping study in the first quarter of 2014. Based on a series of consultations, participatory workshops and desk research, the study offered recommendations for how CIVICUS could facilitate people-powered accountability in the Post-2015 measurement framework. These recommendations provide the strategic framework for the Big Development DataShift, outlining key risks and opportunities for developing civil society capacities, nurturing and engaging national and international networks, and progressing the global dialogue on citizen voice and accountability. The scoping study was produced by the engine room.
The Big Development DataShift is Promoting People-Powered Accountability through three priority areas:
The Big Development DataShift is working with a broad, multi-stakeholder platform to increase the coverage of citizen reporting across issues and countries. Sustained support and development of people-powered accountability mechanism encourages responsiveness to local needs, facilitates sharing and uptake between groups, and builds a scalable methodology for mobilising citizen monitoring resources.
The Big Development DataShift envisions a robust, interoperable system of disparate data sets. Citizen reporting is highly contextual, but comparability is required to monitor and shape the global development agenda. Exploring the opportunities of harmonising data streams and the possibilities of standardising data collection encourages a collaborative, user-driven process to build a framework of comparability.
The Big Development DataShift is giving citizens and change leaders a new set of tools for effective campaigning and advocacy. By addressing the challenges of coverage and comparability, these evidence-based tools provide the missing link between the data revolution and the call for greater transparency and accountability in the global development agenda.
Over the next 2 years, CIVICUS will work with partners across the globe in a concerted effort to enhance the capacity and effectiveness of people-powered accountability.