The World Bank plans to release various tools and technology applications to help improve development research.
World Bank President Robert Zoellick said Sept. 29 that the lender is adopting a new approach to development research called Open Data, Open Knowledge, Open Solutions.
“This needs to be more than just a slogan. This needs to be a fundamentally new way of searching for development solutions, in a networked development architecture, where none dominates and all can play a part,” he said in a speech at Georgetown University.
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The bank will announce this week collaborations with Google and Microsoft on broadening access to the lender’s development data, said Shaida Badiee, director of the bank’s development economics data department.
“The new data tools and website improvements will make it easier for researchers and software developers to obtain, visualize and analyze data,” said Badiee. “This is about putting the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of development into people’s hands.”
The global lender will also soon launch a new data visualization tool, AidFlows, which will provide country-by-country data on aid flows.
An interactive platform, Mapping for Results, is also set to pilot later this month, which will overlay poverty and Millennium Development Goals data over 1,000 World Bank-financed projects.
