Data matters. Reliable and timely data is crucial for decision-making. Data drives innovation and is an important source of value. In the public sector, data helps drive better development outcomes through evidence-based policies and improved transparency and accountability.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD) suggests that the social and economic benefits produced by data are material at 1%-2.5% of GDP.
How does SA compare in terms of the volume of data available? We scraped the World Bank data portal to see how many economic, financial and socioeconomic series are available for SA compared with other countries, and found that we compare favourably to wealthy countries and other emerging markets in terms of the volume of indicators available.
However, our data is available on a less timely basis than for many major economies. So, while we do not lag on data volumes, policymakers and firms in SA are left to make decisions with less up-to-date information than in peer economies.
To assess how our data ecosystem stacks up internationally it is worth summarising a useful benchmark for assessing data sharing and governance — the “Fair principles”. The F stands for findability — can data be discovered and read by humans and machines? The A is for accessibility — are there open protocols for retrieving data and descriptions of the data?
The I is for interoperability — can data be integrated with other data and used by different applications for storage, processing, and analysis? And lastly, the R stands for reusability — can data be used in different settings, and does it meet required data standards?
As I will argue, a lot of SA data does not meet these requirements.
Let us start with the areas where SA’s data ecosystem compares favourably with international best practice. The Global Data Barometer is a benchmarking study of more than 100 countries’ capabilities in terms of data infrastructure, data quality and the regulations that bear on data. The study shows that SA performs well on availability of vital statistics, particularly budget and public finance data.
SA also has data protection governance frameworks in place, such as the Protection of Personal Information Act, which protects citizens’ data rights. The high ranking for SA’s budget transparency is backed up by the Open Budget Survey, which finds that our National Treasury provides comprehensive public finance information to the public that allows budgets and government performance to be assessed in fine detail at different levels of government.
However, SA is falling behind in the implementation of data frameworks for use and sharing. The Barometer shows we are far behind with respect to open government data rules and initiatives, frameworks that support data sharing or the availability of procurement data. SA lags countries such as Rwanda, Uganda and Nigeria in many areas related to the openness of public data and the existence frameworks for promoting data use.
International best practice is “open by default” rules in public institutions to make data available unless not doing so can be justified on privacy or national security grounds. Most SA public institutions have poor data management so there are no comprehensive data catalogues that summarise what data is available, and no classifications of the sensitivity of data readily available. Low data management maturity leads to a reluctance to share data because most of it is treated as sensitive.
If we compare national spending on official statistics in several countries around the world, we spend a similar proportion of GDP on official statistics as major emerging market economies such as Mexico or Chile. So it is not clear that we are not prioritising official statistics enough. In fact, there has been an increase in the number of statistical releases by Stats SA over the past two decades, and SA has met 59 out of 63 of the Group of 20 data gaps initiative targets.
SA’s poor relative performance on data availability reflects a lack of progress in making published data easy to use and share. For example, World Bank estimates show we rank poorly on machine-readability of data. This means it is difficult to access time series of data or automate processes that use data.
SA also stands out for limited progress in developing standard-setting institutions that create an enabling environment for responsible data use and sharing. Best practice is for information regulators to provide things like data sharing agreement templates and to promote common technical standards, and for government institutions to enforce explicit open data rules.
If you go to our Information Regulator’s website the only templates available are for compliance with data protection regulations. Standardised protocols for the various legal, information technology or governance aspects of data use are comparatively rare in SA. While we have frameworks for safeguarding privacy in place, these must balance protection of citizens’ data and the rights of intellectual property holders against ensuring an enabling environment for data use and sharing for public policy and commercial purposes.
The good news is that advances in technology have made it easier and cheaper to implement best practice approaches to responsible data governance and sharing. The Covid-19 pandemic also encouraged many countries’ governments to prioritise modernising data collection, and to experiment with using “alternative” data sources to understand high frequency developments in different regions and apply big data approaches for evidence-based policy-making.
Yet SA’s progress in this respect has been slow compared to countries with fewer resources. What do we need to do to catch up? The Global Data Barometer suggests an enabling regulatory environment that promotes the use and reuse of public data is a key stumbling block that needs to be removed. An independent stock-take of the extent of our data access challenges would help identify their scale and what needs to be prioritised. A peer review through the OECD Council on Good Statistical Practice would be a good start.
The reason less developed African countries lead SA in several aspects of data maturity is that our government institutions tend to focus on institutionwide, long-term projects instead of empowering small teams to work on well-defined problems. Large committees struggle to solve complex problems. It is far better to have small, high capability teams work on achieving quick wins to demonstrate the value that can be realised from data projects. How do you eat an elephant? Piece by piece.
The government and state-owned enterprises must also begin releasing data sets in machine-readable format. If SA is to benefit from the promise of the fourth industrial revolution government and businesses need to understand what is happening in the economy day-to-day, and be able to identify challenges that need to be dealt with. These are also preconditions for SA’s fintech industry to mature, and ultimately for SA’s companies to remain competitive internationally. Universities could also act as honest data brokers to ensure responsible data sharing between researchers and the public and private sectors.
It is time for the government to unleash the potential of the rich data that is available in the country. We have all the resources we need and a private sector that is eager to help.
• Dr Steenkamp is CEO of Codera Analytics and a research fellow with the economics department at Stellenbosch University.
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