Making data work for human development

This policy oriented paper underscores the importance of improving data for advancing human development and identifies ways to strengthen links between better data and better development outcomes. It explores two questions. What types of policies and institutions are needed to enhance data collection and compilation efforts so that human development conditions and progress can be tracked and evaluated with renewed breadth of dimensions and depth of disaggregation? And what actions and institutions can translate these new tools of assessment into the greatest positive improvements in people’s lives, so that no one is left behind? The paper identifies a framework with five clusters of actions that can help build measurement capacity and bolster evidence-based policymaking for advancing human development. Actions concentrate on strengthening data availability, using data to make inequalities visible, expanding access to information, upholding human rights in the data age, and increasing the use of evidence in decisionmaking.