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Public-private partnerships key to unlocking data value

Public-private partnerships key to unlocking data value

A call for more public–private partnerships in order to ensure the production of meaningful data dominated discussion on the final day of the UN World Data Forum taking place in Cape Town this week.

Panelists representing both sectors suggest that data gaps and other challenges identified by the UN can be addressed through collaboration between private, public and community-level data producers and users.

Philip Thigo, Senior Advisor on Data and Innovation Strategy in the Office of the Deputy President in Kenya said development must be based on a co-creation model with innovation and data as the engine or raw material.

"Data has enabled Kenya to understand that our development progress is not only dependent on internal players. It is actually dependent on other players beyond the continent because technology goes across borders. Data provides the opportunity to understand where these players are, what kind of data sets they hold and how that can benefit the country. It is not just about Facebook or Amazon as the holders of data, we have started looking at everyone as a producer of data and at what they can put on the table. We look at non-traditional players like local universities and not the Harvards or the MITs.We also look at technical universities which we haven't always looked at, as well as innovation hubs like iHub and Nailab in Nairobi."

Thigo says collaboration over data production has changed the perception of the private sector as being mere contractors for the state, in addition to easing the often antagonistic relationship between government and civil society in Kenya.

Molly Jackman, Public Policy Research Manager at Facebook cited her company's use of data generated through the Facebook platform in a bid to share targeted information with Brazilians during a breakout of the Zika virus in partnership with Unicef, as a great example of the impact of partnerships between public organisations and private sector players.

"Unicef wanted to educate people on how to protect themselves but traditionally they would have relied on focus groups or surveys, but as we all know those require trade offs in terms of the time they take, the expense and therefore the representativeness. The impact of this was really profound as we were able to help Unicef measure the impact of their campaigns on the platform. The previous Unicef campaign, which was not data driven, reached 60 000 people which is not trivial - but within hours of launching the data driven campaign they reached 4 million people."

Emanuele Baldacci, CIO And Director of Methodology at Eurostat reiterated the importance of partnerships and collaboration which he says are undoubtedly essential for greater access to data which is not in the public domain and available for public use.

"To make it happen you need some kind of win-win statement and value proposition. Some of the data is held in private hands and it is valuable to the companies holding it, so you will need to find a common or mutual benefit. For example in the use of mobile network operator data we found that as a statistician we could give back something to the MNOs in the form of comparing data that was coming from mobile operator networks to statistics based on census data, and that could provide a quality check for the company and at the same time also give an opportunity for the statisticians."

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