Burgess COMMENTARY
I am delighted to see this ... but there is something wrong. The views expressed in this brief film are not much different from views being expressed 30 and 40 years ago when I was doing this sort of work around the world. In the 50+ years since I completed my formal education, there has been an amazing increase in knowledge and the power of technology, but the application of this to make the world a better place has been tiny. I have concluded that we have systemic dysfunction and for this to be fixed, there need to be systemic solutions. We need better decisions ... and for this the appropriate data can help. I subscribe to the idea that you can't manage what you don't measure, and that management data are very powerful ... but you had better measure the right things. But it is the decisions that matter, and not so much the data. The best management data is the least data, as quickly as possible and understandable at a granular level, that enables good decisions to be made quickly, incrementally and reliably ... and at extremely low cost. We are working with a complex socio-enviro-economic system which is seriously dysfuntional and in need of system change. I know better is possible ... but I would argue that this will not be achieved by what most experts are recommending. Exciting possibilities exist. and it is of great importance that things are improved so that better decisions are made and better outcomes achieved! Peter Burgess TrueValueMetrics.org
Peter Burgess

As manager of the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) for the past two years, I have met incredible people working to make humanitarian data easier, faster and more useful in their context. I have also noticed that the conversation around data, with a focus on code and infrastructure, can often get abstract very quickly.

To help make our work more accessible, HDX teamed up with the filmmaker, Michael Chung, to show how people are connecting data to positive outcomes and why it matters in the humanitarian sector. Michael travelled to Kenya and Colombia, the two pilot locations for HDX, to get a first hand look at the community engagement process for collecting data. He also interviewed data champions and policy makers in those locations and in New York and Washington D.C.

The following short film is the result of 40+ interviews – far too many than could be included in a 5 minute film. Thank you to everyone who was involved. We hope you like it.

https://youtu.be/7QX5Ji5gl9g

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