Over the last few years, I have been systematically filing RTIs to various public agencies in order to better understand and test ability of these agencies in using routinely collected data in policymaking and implementation. As I get more and more responses from newer departments, it becomes increasingly apparent that most of our public agencies are hardly making use of the mountains of data that they sit on for improving the quality of services and/or schemes. Unfortunately, most of our evidence often comes from resource-intensive externally funded research/surveys, while government data is set aside for poor quality or utility. Such is the case, I recently discovered, with our civil registration system which handles births and deaths, and with many other departments as well.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 17:55:46 +0000