- The Guardian Monday 2 May 2022
(^28) Financial
N
ext slide please. We
soon caught on to
the way it worked.
Chris Whitty would
give the word and
up would pop
a chart detailing the progress
in the fi ght against Covid-19.
There are memes and mugs to
commemorate the catchphrase of
England’s chief medical offi cer.
Whitty’s presentations detailed
infection rates, hospitalisations
and deaths. Within weeks of the
pandemic’s arrival in early 2020
the public knew about the R
number – a way of assessing how
fast the virus was spreading.
Over the months, public
concern about Covid-19 has
faded and it is now well behind
infl ation in the list of concerns
troubling voters. Rising prices
have meant increased scrutiny
of the way Britain calculates the
cost of living, including from the
chef and activist Jack Monroe.
The Offi ce for National Statistics
determines the annual infl ation
rate by collecting the price of 700
goods and services at various
locations and online, but says it
wants to know more about pricemovements and how spending
habits are changing.
Almost certainly, the next big
economic debate will be about
whether the UK is heading for
recession. In 2008, output had
already been falling for several
months before it was refl ected
in the quarterly fi gures for gross
domestic product.
Monthly GDP fi gures have
been introduced and, since the
pandemic, the use of experimental
fi gures designed to provide real-
time indicators on the state of
the economy. These include card
payments, the number of people
eating out and traffi c density.
The common thread that links
these three examples is data.
Governments have always seen
the connection between data
and policy decisions. William I ’s
Domesday Book was an early stab
at a national audit for 11th- century
England. In 1801, concern about
whether there would be enough
food for a growing population
prompted the fi rst census covering
England, Scotland and Wales.
Over time, the state has found
out more and more about how its
citizens live, to the point where1930s when the lack of accurate and
comprehensive data hindered the
response to the Great Depression in
the US. But not everywhere.
In some parts of the world,
investment in data collection and
analysis is abysmally low. Four
in 10 of the world’s deaths are
unregistered. More than a quarter
of children overall and more than
half of children in sub-Saharan
Africa under the age of fi ve were
not registered at birth. A Google
search for the world’s population
brings up the number 7.9 billion
but that’s really just an educated
guess. The same applies to human
development indicators such as
infant mortality or literacy rates.
There’s more. Only one in six
countries have suffi cient data
to report on progress towards
hitting climate crisis targets and on
average the latest emissions data is
from 2015. Two-thirds of countries
have had to postpone a census due
to the pandemic. The UN has a set
of sustainable development goals
to be hit by 2030: in only six of the
17 have more than two-thirds of
countries data to report.
A paper published jointly by
the UN, the World Bank and thethere is a legitimate debate to be
had about invasion of privacy. It
is not just governments, however.
Use of loyalty cards gives retailers
information about our spending
habits. Tech companies such
as Facebook and Google know
what every user is interested in
and tailor the ads that pop up
accordingly.
Getting the balance right is not
easy. Ministers needed accurate
data to monitor the impact of the
lockdown on infection rates. The
Bank of England needs enough
information to be able to calibrate
the right level of interest rates.
Life has moved on from the earlyGlobal Partnership for Sustainable
Development Data (a network of
more than 600 partners from tech
giants to civil society groups) says
the issues are most pressing where
the challenges are greatest. Gaps in
the data are glaring for gender in all
areas of development: economic
opportunities, environment,
health, human security and public
participation.
Clearly, technology has a role
to play in plugging these gaps
and in some cases is already
doing so. Ghana, for example,
set up a partnership between its
national statistics offi ce, Vodafone
Ghana and the Swedish nonprofi t
foundation Flowminder to track
mobility and help in public health
emergency planning.
Two other ingredients are
needed. The fi rst is money, because
after a 10-year period in which aid
for data systems has fl atlined there
is now a fi nancing gap of more than
$1bn ( £800m ). For donor countries,
spending money on statisticians
is simply not as glamorous as
spending money on a new hospital,
even though better data would lead
to better health care.
The World Bank and the UN
launched a campaign last week to
raise at least $500m over the next
10 years, which they believe could
act as the catalyst for billions of
dollars of overseas development
assistance and private sector
funding.
The second ingredient is
governance, where there is a
need to ensure that low-income
countries are not stripped of data
in the way they have too often been
stripped of their natural resources.
A long history of exploitation
means care must be given to ensure
potential benefi ts from improved
data are shared fairly. Facebook
is expanding in Africa and so is
Huawei: safeguards are needed to
ensure this investment serves the
public good.
Even so, the message is clear. If
the world is serious about tackling
the climate emergency it needs
better data. If it wants to have
better defences against future
pandemics it needs better data.
If it wants faster growth in poorer
countries it needs better data.
Making decisions in the dark is not
sensible. Next slide please.Analysis
Larry ElliottSpending money on
statisticians is simply
not as glamorous as
a new hospital, even
though the data would
lead to better healthcareFrom
health to
climate,
reliable
data is
crucial
▼ Vaccination time in Ghana, which
has set up a collaborative project to
collect public health statisticsPHOTOGRAPH: OLIVIER ASSELIN/ALAMY