Toward Better Monitoring and Implementation of the Global Goals by Empowering Communities with Blockchain
Background
In an acknowledgement of the multifaceted nature of development, the member states of the United Nations agreed to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. The SDGs address the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, and peace and justice. With limited resources available for humanitarian, development and peace work, demonstrating results and building evidence are more important than ever. Firm results and sound evidence serve to enhance the accountability of stakeholders, prioritize resource management, correctly identify sources of impact, and help project managers’ timely action and responses after interventions. While the need for better data collection, information and knowledge management and evidence building is dire, traditional data collection and analysis methods often have issues with timeliness, processing and measurement of progress of the global goals. This complexity is reflected in the way some SDG indicators have been classified into distinct tiers: Tier 2 indicators are those that lack regularly produced data, and Tier 3 indicators are those without internationally established methodology or standards of measurement.
In this light, a new data collection system to augment or supplant existing data sources or to generate completely new statistics could revolutionize how we measure progress on the SDGs. When existing datasets have issues of data quantity, quality, representivity and sustainability, there is much room for substantial improvement in the data value chain. Some of the major bottlenecks in traditional data collection approaches include poor quality of data collected, insufficient data quantity, unsafe data storage, lack of entities to collect required data, and lack of dedicated resources.
What we need now is an innovative digital solution
Blockchain technology can provide solutions for these challenges through its inherent characteristics such as immutability, traceability, and decentralization. Blockchain has several positive aspects lacking in traditional data collection systems: transparency of information being collected, sustainability of data collection by incentivizing actors to provide information over a longer timespan, and ability to engage with wider range of stakeholders in activities that are aligned both with their own economic/social interests and with the SDGs. By leveraging collective intelligence through a decentralized and participatory platform, blockchain technology can move the needle in terms of data quality, quantity, sustainability and representivity. In doing so, insightful data collection by empowering citizens will be innovative to the field of international development.
Ways to crowdsource data with blockchain with or without a token incentive mechanism
A decentralized blockchain platform can be an improved channel to collect data without a centralized controlling agency to oversee data collection and validate the results. More specifically, data crowdsourcing through a blockchain platform may solve the aforementioned challenges in measuring SDGs. This can be achieved 1) without any token incentive mechanism (Case 1) or 2) with a mechanism to motivate participants to register relevant data points (Case 2).
Case 1. Collecting new data points through distributed ledger technology (DLT).
Case 2. Enabling long-term, sustainable data collection by introducing an incentive mechanism.
Case 1
On this shared public platform, participants register relevant data points, contributing to the accumulation of data. For projects with impact indicators that lack an existing dataset, accumulated data on the blockchain platform could help provide grounds for building datasets. DLT’s features such as immutability and traceability increase the efficacy and credibility of data. In addition, DLT could provide value-added datasets on top of existing data, enabling bottom-up data collection, possibly with a wider reach. This newly generated dataset could also be triangulated with existing data and indicators for validation and verification. Also, two different sets of data could be overlaid to yield new meaningful insights.
For the SDG indicators, relevant organizations may consider using this approach for Tier III indicators. Tackling multiple challenges prevalent in Tier III indicators, data collection through DLT can help set up a data collection system for the indicators and encourage data generation by crowdsourcing data in ways that have not been possible with existing methods. In terms of Tier I indicators, crowdsourced data in a participatory way augments or complements the existing sources.
Case 2
With an incentive mechanism, blockchain motivates data contributors in various ways so that required information for certain indicators can be collected. For instance, a public sector organization may customize and diversify incentive mechanisms for different indicators in order to properly incentivize participants to report only relevant information to the blockchain platform. This can be applied to sustainable data collection for Tier II SDG indicators, which have clear international standards and methodologies for measurement but lack regular production of data. In other words, not only incentivizing participants to register relevant data points, DLT with a token incentive mechanism also enables sustainable data collection because participants would collect data in a longer span and in a regular manner. This incentive mechanism could also broaden the scope of data collection. The importance of regular production in a wider scope is widely recognized; this also leads to a better data life cycle, which ranges from data generation to data purging via data synthesis with other inputs to generate meaningful insights for stakeholders. Furthermore, a ”smart contract” could be used to ensure that only the data points reviewed and approved by other stakeholders as relevant are recorded in the ledger, thereby bolstering the quality of collective knowledge.
There could be various types of data contributors. For example, numerous civil society organizations could become data contributors; databases acquired from diverse resources and surveys (either qualitative or quantitative) could be recorded on this co-owned, distributed ledger to create one shared knowledge hub. Through this mechanism — in which civil society organizations and donors could mutually benefit from innovative financing plans — meaningful datasets will be available for all relevant stakeholders in the international development scene, laying fertile ground for limitless range of cooperation.
There are some elements to be considered…
In order to determine which data are to be collected through a public blockchain platform, several criteria — such as data accessibility or literacy — may be considered. For example, to easily crowdsource data, piloting indicators with youth having a high level of technology literacy would be relatively easy. For a pilot project, it would be better to utilize existing demographic information and choose ranges of potential sample population that is willing to participate in data collection.
This post has covered some possible applications of blockchain for better data collection. Looking forward, another feasible feature to consider would be implementing an embedded data verification mechanism by introducing ”smart contracts” with which people can reach consensus in a democratic way. Stay tuned for further writing on this feature!
If anyone has thoughts or feedbacks on this article or has ideas for innovative collaborations or dialogues, please do not hesitate to contact our manager (community@klaytn.com, Minjee Kim) in Social Impact team of Klaytn. Klaytn is looking forward to your comments and ideas.
