Towards Visibility and Inclusion in Global Development Data: Takeaways from the United Nations World Data Forum
Natalia Mejía Pardo, The Data Tank
The 2024 United Nations World Data Forum (UNDWF), held in Medellín, Colombia, gathered approximately 3,000 participants, underscoring the growing commitment to using data to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Born in Cape Town in 2017, the Forum has now become a key platform for fostering partnerships, driving data innovation, and securing the political and financial support necessary to strengthen the global data ecosystem.
Visibility and Inclusion in Global Development Data
A major theme at the Forum this year was on visibility and inclusion in global development data. There are several multi-stakeholder efforts to create inclusive frameworks for data collection and analysis with the aim to ensure that all communities are represented in global data systems. An example of this is the launch of the iCount Coalition, a network of civil society organizations dedicated to ensuring that global development data is informed by inclusive, intersectional, and rights-based approaches. The network includes member organizations like Open Data Watch, Women Deliver, Equal Measures 2030, and Data2X, among others.
Several panel sessions addressed how to incorporate a human rights and multi-stakeholder approach into official statistics, ensuring that marginalised communities are visible and heard.
Discussions highlighted that citizen participation is key to ending exploitative data collection, which extracts information without benefiting the communities involved or the quality of the data.
Inclusive data collection and analysis methods are key to empowering communities and preventing data systems from reinforcing societal inequalities. Only by listening to all stakeholders can data become a tool for empowerment, rather than exploitation. Moreover, inclusion and meaningful involvement are also key to the quality of the data and therefore the impact it can have.
One example discussed was the experiences of LGBTQ+ communities and their caution in trusting statistical agencies when they survey the population. Lack of trust extends to how variables are conceptualised, data is collected, and analysis is done and which also leads to inaccurate appraisal of the needs of these communities. During the event, LGBTQ+ activists, such as Sin Violencia LGBTI, advocated for the need to involve the community in data projects. They argued the importance of helping design survey questions, participating in data collection, and contributing to analysing the results. Additionally, and beyond traditional statistics, activists manifested the potential of the community-collected data they hold and how this data can complement and validate official data from public agencies to better understand their reality.
This shifts the perspective from seeing marginalised populations as passive subjects of study to recognising them as active producers of knowledge.
The Data Tank thinks that meaningful participation in how and what data is used to inform policies and services is key. Our Programme Manager Natalia Mejía and our co-founder Stefaan Verhulst joined the Forum in Medellin. Verhulst spoke at the panel “Promote Trust, Protection, and Ethics in Data”, where he discussed the role of official statistics, open data, and citizen participation in building trust in data and emerging technologies like more recent types of AI-driven systems. A key takeaway from the discussion was that while official statistics offices remain vital as a country’s primary data source, the rise of citizen-generated data and non-traditional sources creates new opportunities for collaboration between the public sector, civil society, and private actors. However, trust — founded on representation and accountability — remains essential for these collaborations to succeed. It is in this context that we are, for example, working with young people across different countries to involve them in processes of engagement and co-ideation on the reuse of data to improve services that matter to them.
Meaningful involvement and the role of a Social License in data reuse
And this is where the concept of a social license for data collection and reuse comes in. The Forum highlighted the need for dynamic public engagement that includes diverse stakeholders — such as youth, people with disabilities, and the LGBTQ+ community — throughout the data life cycle, including less visible groups at the intersection of different realities and experiences.
This active involvement can improve the quality and representativeness of the data, foster trust in data, and deepen public understanding of its potential for both empowerment and social impact.
A Social License represents society’s implicit approval of an activity, rooted in trust, legitimacy, and alignment with community values. For data projects, it represents collective consent and the endorsement of communities regarding the collection, use, and reuse of their data for specific uses at different points of the data lifecycle. As others have stated, ‘legal authority does not necessarily command social legitimacy’. Achieving this can be done through citizen engagement methods of varying complexity, from simple surveys to comprehensive deliberative citizen assemblies.
Therefore, integrating a Social License into data initiatives can help prevent exploitative practices and ensures a fairer distribution of data benefits. By promoting informed consent and enhancing awareness, we move towards a more inclusive and representative data ecosystem, which can result in more quality data. In the words of a participant: “data systems grounded in empowerment and participation won’t reproduce inequalities.”
