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122 SHARING KNOWLEDGE21,000 project sites, representing $6 billionin donor commitments. The Ministrypledged to make and keep the data opento enable broad access by a host of users.Madhu Kumar Marasini, InternationalEconomic Cooperation and CoordinationDivision Chief and Joint Finance Secretary,remarked that “this openness will not onlystrengthen accountability in foreign aidmobilisation, but also provide additionalopportunities to make aid more effective”.At the same time, donors like the AfricanDevelopment Bank (AfDB) and the AsianDevelopment Bank have embedded geocodinginto their internal processes and arenow publishing this geocoded data to IATI.Third, citizens, public officials andscholars must have mapping tools tovisualise and make sense of the data. InNepal, AidData and Esri, a company thatsupplies geographic information systemsoftware, integrated a mapping feature intothe existing government Aid ManagementPlatform, enabling a broad user base toexplore the data.Appealing to a global audience, AidDatalaunched the AidData.org platform to lowerthe barriers to data exploration with easyto-usetools to explore research questions,create maps and visualisations, and sharecreations and insights. Flashy tools andtechnology bring data to life, but buildingthe capacity for more people to makemeaning from it, from the civil societygroup in a remote village to a policy-makerin the capital city of a developing country, iscritical and often overlooked.As such, sparking uptake and sustaineduse of data is the final frontier of the datarevolution. From Open Data Bootcampshosted by the World Bank, to hackathonsin tech hubs around the world, there is agrowing focus on building data literacy.Infomediaries and data journalists havethe potential to reach more peopleby transforming raw data into stories,visualisations and analysis.One innovative model that holdspromise is Code4Kenya, which embedstech-savvy fellows and developers inmedia and civil society organisations, withpromising early wins, like the ‘Find MySchool’ application for comparing primaryThe African Development Bank’s MapAfrica site (http://mapafrica.afdb.org) displays the subnational locations ofall the bank’s investments in AfricaOverlay of education project locations with district literacy rates in Nepal’s Aid Management Platform(http://portal.mof.gov.np)The AidData portal (www.aiddata.org) enables users to view project locations alongside key developmentindicators, such as the locations of various donor health projects overlaid with infant mortality rates in Indonesiaschool performance. We need to seedmore creative, grassroots approaches likeCode4Kenya to make data relevant anduseful to local organisations and citizens.Spurring and sustaining demand forbroad data use will not be an easy process.Citizens and communities need toexperience first-hand how data can helpthem engage in dialogue about prioritiesand further their own developmentagendas. If information is to be relevantit needs to be closer to the lives, needsand aspirations of citizens. This is wheremore granular, local information is afoundational piece to the success of thedata revolution.As donors and governments investheavily in the ‘supply side’ by openingup and creating vast stores of new data,devoting equal attention to kindlingsustained demand and capacity for use ofthese data will be crucial.GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT GOALS 2014

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