3 November 2016: A series of workshops provided by the UN Data Innovation Lab aims to improve the UN system’s capability to investigate, design and implement emerging data techniques to support the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Lab is led by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP), and is one of four initiatives to enable the UN to harness the data revolution for sustainable development.
Based on the 2014 recommendations of an Independent Expert Advisory Group to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB) identified four initiatives: a UN Data Innovation Lab to experiment with new data and analyses; a World Data Forum to create and strengthen partnerships; a UN System Data Catalogue to use existing data better; and a Data Visualization and Dashboard.
The UN Data Innovation Lab is a series of six two-day workshops for representatives of UN agencies who want to advance the adoption of real-time information and data for decision-making across the UN. Each workshop will develop, test and pilot joint data projects, and support them through the project design and analysis processes. A wikispace on the Lab provides information on its history, workshop materials and links to live data innovation projects being supported through the workshop.
Magdy Martinez-Soliman, UN Development Programme (UNDP), highlights the importance of the UN Data Innovation Labs in addressing development data challenges, in an article on Inter Press Service (IPS). Observing that “the world is awash with data,” Martinez-Soliman reflects that the private sector is much more adept at extracting value from data innovations and improving data analytical capabilities than the development community and the public sector, which lack sufficient data on “the lives of the most excluded people on this planet.” Martinez-Soliman identifies data gaps regarding the quality of education, health and other services for the poor and the discrimination and exclusion of women, stressing that such gaps create monitoring challenges because there is not sufficient reliable and timely data to measure interventions and track progress on the SDGs.
Martinez-Soliman shares how the UN Data Innovation Labs are working to close these gaps by increasing the UN System capacity to use data techniques to support the SDGs: they “will help move data innovation from tinkering at the edges into the mainstream of the UN humanitarian and development work.” He observes that the UN System still has “some ways to go to create an environment conducive to data innovation within the UN System, where risk is encouraged, failure is tolerated and learning lessons are ingrained in the culture, successes are scaled up, and we are equipped to reap the dividends of technological progress and data innovations to serve the poorest and most vulnerable,” and concludes that the UN Data Innovation Lab series can play a critical role in ensuring that the UN System itself is not left behind in the data revolution.
The UN Data Innovation Lab has held two workshops so far. A workshop on ‘Craft a vision of the future’ convened in May 2016, to provide participants with the knowledge, insights and tools to help their organizations harness new and emerging sources of data to improve decision-making. Participants identified key priorities for advancing the use of data, including filling data gaps, making data open and available, cultivating relationships with (uncommon) partners, and replicating approaches and strategies that work. A workshop on ‘Build a data strategy: match challenges with data solutions,’ in September 2016, aimed to strengthen the UN staff capacity to design and implement data-driven solutions to real policy challenges faced by their office or agency, including by having data experts work with UN staff to design a real data innovation project.
Future workshops in 2017 are expected to address exploring data partnerships, making data meaningful, and supporting data-driven decision-making. [UN Data Innovation Lab Workshop Wikispace] [UN Data Innovation Lab Workshop Blog on Workshop Series] [UN Data Innovation Lab Workshop Blog on Workshop One] [UNDP Assistant Administrator Article]