While the world is focusing bigly on big data, matters of discrimination on the one hand, and rising nationalism and populism on the other, are a reminder of the importance of feedback data and country-level statistics.
It may be hard to imagine that midst hooting buses and matatus*, touts haggling with potential commuters and small cafes bustling with throngs of people would be the same space shared by many others who quietly and seemingly undisturbed look down on their mobile phones busy surfing the internet. This …
Big data has been hailed as a powerful resource to inform and advance sustainable development. But what type of big data are we talking about? How are we making sense of it? And how do we ensure that we’re not losing the individual to a wealth of numbers?
Does greater trust come with increased openness? Greater transparency, induced by ICT-generated data, in public institutions may show promise in certain political contexts. In others – namely in democratic environments already enjoying a degree of openness – it can be rather damaging, contrary to popular belief. Increased transparency has become …
Big data are produced at an accelerated speed, and made use of by governments, businesses and research agendas- for good or bad. At the same time “small data” are trapped in individual researchers’ hard drives around the world, for no good reason at all.
The severe lack of sex-disaggregated data and its impact on effective decision-making has finally been noticed. As a result, there has been an increase in initiatives aimed at collecting data focusing on poor women and girls.
Amazon has patented a new wristband to be used to track where their workers are placing their hands, raising renewed concerns about workers’ well-being.
