It’s all about data

What are some of the challenges and possibilities of working with data in Pakistan? That question is increasingly being raised at research workshops, think tank moots and at data boot camps such as the one hosted at the Centre for Excellence in Journalism at IBA in Karachi last week.
And what are some of the recurring answers to that question? First, there is this notion that data doesn’t exist in Pakistan, which is an exaggeration. There are plenty of good data sets in the country. But a lot of those are locked in government closets because the government is too slow and bureaucratic to share it in a timely manner, or simply doesn’t want to share at all.
If and when the government or any of its bodies is willing to share data, the cost of the data set is usually too high. Lastly, and perhaps the biggest of all the challenge of working with data is that the demand for data is rather wanting. That’s because there is a clear absence of evidence based discourse – be it drawing room conversations of the nation’s uncles and aunties, TV shows or a bunch of friends hanging about a cafe.
Turning this dynamic around is not going to be a piece of cake. But it is possible if concerted and coordinated efforts are made to that end.
At the one end, the country’s civil society, the politicians, academic and third sector researchers, and so forth need to step up on their efforts to get the Right to Information (RTI) law passed by the parliament. The passage of that law is not going to be a magical wand that will unleash the forces of data from the confines of the government. But it’s a start. Once passed, the RTI can gradually help in lowering the cost of data, and improve the timeliness of information.
The second idea that data activists could toy around with is to try setting up data clusters at universities across Pakistan, where guided and funded by the universities, students help gather data, clean it, process it and share it in a palatable form with the citizens. In that vein, the more localised the information is, the better.
So for instance, a university or a consortium of universities in Sukkur, Multan, Quetta or Faisalabad etcetera can pool in resources, collect socio-economic databases relevant to their regions and disseminate the same for consumption in their local economy. The dissemination can be done via local FM radios, or by build narratives out of data sets and having them published it in local newspapers, or release interesting info-graphics to be made viral on their local most used social media pages.
This could help achieve two ends. At the one end, engaging students in the process can hopefully help trigger a demand for data. At the other end, it can help lower the cost of acquiring and processing that data, whether the cost is measured in terms of the amount to be paid, or the resources to be allocated, or the umpteen trips to government offices and act like mendicants in their courts.
The question is which university would like to take this initiative and whether are there any private sector thoughts leaders to fund this kind of ventures.