Data-Driven Decision Making in Fragile Contexts

Book excerpt: The need for evidence-based decision making at all levels of government is perhaps greatest in fragilesettings. Data deficiencies contribute to state fragility and exacerbate constraints on the capacity toprovide basic services, public security, and the rule of law. The lack of robust, good-quality data can alsohave a disabling effect on government efforts to manage political conflict. Indeed, the lack of data canworsen conflict, since violent settings pose substantial challenges to knowledge generation, capture,andapplication.The development of sustainable and professional data-literate stakeholders who are able to produce andincrease the quality and accessibility of official statistics can help to improve development outcomes.Goodquality and reliable statistics are required to track the progress of development policies through themonitoring of performance indicators and targets and to ensure that public resources are achieving results.Although reliable data alone cannot have a transformative effect without the right contextual incentives,they constitute an essential prerequisite for greater accountability and more efficient decision making.Data-Driven Decision Making in Fragile Contexts: Evidence from Sudanexplores methods and insights fordatacollection and use in fragile contexts, with a focus on findings from Sudan. It begins by posing severalquestions on the political economy of data and then sets out a framework for assessing the validity,reliability, and potential impact of data on decision making in fragile settings. It then provides insightsregarding the challenges associated with data-driven decision making in Sudan, derived from the 2014–15United Kingdom’s Department for International Development Sudanese household survey. Featured aredata-driven analyses of diverse topics, from public service delivery to the interplay of governance, trust,andstate legitimacy.As the data revolution and the advent of the Sustainable Development Goals herald an increasing need tosolicit the perceptions and experiences of program beneficiaries, the impetus to develop and deploy goodquality survey instruments will increase. This volume provides an important proof of concept that this typeofendeavor is both feasible and useful in fragile contexts and, in combination with other important datacollection tools, can be effectively utilized to enrich the evidence base of decision making in these settings.