As global development budgets shrink, we can't afford to waste a single dollar. Yet funding is often fragmented. One of the smartest investments is in the data that governments use to make decisions that shape societies, and aligning behind national systems would deliver more and better for donors, governments, and people alike.
Imagine if, every time a bilateral donor or an NGO wanted to work with a new community, they built a brand new road to get there — one that didn’t connect with any existing routes. Travelers would have to choose a road and stick to it, even if others were faster and safer, and goods could only move on that donor’s roads. Meanwhile, governments are left scrambling to stitch together a national network from a tangle of disconnected roads, each built in isolation to serve a different agenda.
This is how too much donor funding for data works in low-income countries.
About the author
Claire Melamed@clairemelamed
Claire Melamed is the CEO of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. She was previously managing director of the Overseas Development Institute, and has worked in the Office of the United Nations Secretary-General and for a number of NGOs. Claire is an affiliated researcher at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge and serves on the boards of Full Fact and Our World in Data. She is also the vice-chair of the U.N.’s Multi-Stakeholder Working Group on Data Governance at All Levels.
