Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Gmail Peter Burgess
[CrisisMappers] OCHA survey on the data requirements of the humanitarian community
Peter Burgess Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 2:15 PM
To: ochadataproject@un.org

I have just completed the SurveyMonkey exercise. I hope you are able to learn something from this survey.

I learned of this OCHA initiative to create a humanitarian community data platform from the CrisisMapper community.

I have been passionate about data since I was an engineering student at Cambridge, and this passion continues to this day. I have taken it through economics, into accountancy, into the corporate world and into the field of official relief and development assistance.

It is vital to understand the purpose of data. As I see it, the purpose of data is to get better decisions to be made than would be made absent the data. I have always worked with the idea that the best management data is the least data that will ensure that the right (best) decisions get made.

As an older person I have a bit of an understanding how far technology has come. Back in 1966 I had charge of a mainframe computer with 4K of main memory ... when I arrived it did not work, but in pretty quick time I had the system working and delivering on a quite sophisticated material (and equipment and labor) requirements planning system together with integrated inventory control, cost accounting and general accounting. I have been concerned for years that the power of technology was progressing well, but the organization of data was going nowhere.

There are reasons for this. The latest iterations of database technology are amazing, but used almost exclusively to help make profit for the corporate organization or trading entities in the capital markets. Virtually nothing of modern great technology is being used for the greater good of society and the global economy.

But it is is worse. There is a terrible lack of understanding about how society works and how the global economy functions. Little bits are understood in great detail, but how it all fits together is hardly understood at all.

After a fairly successful corporate career I did a certain amount of international consulting for the World Bank and different parts of the UN system. Some of the data systems that were developed were quite 'cutting edge' but one of the issues that I faced was that facts often did not fit with the policy framework of the institution. Good data would aggravate this problem. No data would make the problem disappear. One piece of history that is being forgotten is the UNDPs Development Cooperation Report (DCR) and the associated Development Cooperation Analysis System (DCAS) that was authorized in 1978 (I think) and continued until around 1991 when it suddenly disappeared with no explanation that I could find. The last iteration of DCAS was a fairly good FoxPro database system. For each country there was an inventory of all the projects getting international support ... a very useful source of data when additional emergency action was needed. The trouble with this database was that it was fairly easy to relate the data to the reality on the ground ... in other words verify the data.

I tried to reconcile DCR data with OECD reporting a number of times, and convinced myself that the OECD data was unbelievable wrong. The reason seemed to be that OECD used data supplied by donors and the DCR was based on financing actually being delivered to the beneficiary country.

I guess part of the reason why I remain passionate about data is that when it is good data and used right it is amazingly powerful. OCHA has two challenges in the initiative you are now undertaking: (1) how to make the data good; and, (2) how to use the data right! This ought to be relatively easy, but it will not be.

In the meantime ... outside the world of official policy and procedures ... I am doing what I can to develop a framework for socio-economic analysis and reporting that is compatible with corporate money profit accounting and the emerging Triple Bottom Line of profit, impact on people and impact on planet. The data emerging from this should also be useful for the work of OCHA and others involved with humanitarian relief and socio-economic development.

Best wishes for your work ... and to the extent that I can be helpful, please feel free to reach out.

Peter Burgess
TrueValue Metrics