At the U.S. Agency for International Development, we are committed to a data-driven and evidence-based approach to development. Data plays a critical role in understanding our development impact, adapting our strategies, and communicating our results. But with limited time, resources, and technology, the process of identifying and collecting the right data — and making sure that data that is accurate, relevant, and useful — can be extremely challenging.
This week, after months of dedicated work, USAID updated its public-private partnership data on the Development Data Library, a dataset that now has information on more than 1,600 partnerships from across the agency.
This data not only helps us better understand how businesses, governments, and nonprofits are collaborating to solve development challenges and allows for additional analysis and insights into partnerships and trends, but the process of collecting and sharing this information also demonstrates how far we have come and how far we still must go to effectively harness and utilize our data.