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[ a reprint with my own permission from the Swivel blog]

It may not be obvious to everyone, but there exists an important problem of data apathy. No one cares about data. And by no one, we mean in the democratic sense.

We hear a lot about the need to get data to the people, and we agree of course. But simply disseminating numbers doesn’t make people care.

Good data should affect policy – but politicians don’t care because they know their voters don’t care. People who vote don’t care because data is not engaging, not to mention accessible, usable, and relevant to their lives.

According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 64% of average Americans can identify Beyonce while only 34% know that Vladimir Putin is the President of Russia. We’d hate to speculate how many have heard of the Millennium Development Goals, one of the most ambitious attempts to date by leaders worldwide to end poverty and alleviate suffering of millions of people around the globe.

Why is the important?

Because if people don’t care about data, politicians don’t care. Spin and opinion become the new currency – which leads to a cascade of misinformation where discerning fact from fiction is practically impossible. And, yes, the internet is only compounding this problem.

If data doesn’t establish itself in new forms of communication in a serious way, the younger generations won’t have the tools they need to become well-informed and active citizens.

We can learn from lessons past. In an excellent book by Elizabeth Eisenstein, “The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe,” the author describes the impact of access to information on normal people.

The printing press brought great changes to the concept of community involvement.

Before the printing press, books were out-of-reach to most. Authors wrote in isolation will little or no input from their audience.

In the case of navigational charts, with the advent of the printing press, people were seeing data for the first time – and finding errors. The more people looked at the books, the better the data got. People were rewarded for their involvement by getting more and better data. Sailors were now able to navigate their ships to safety. Lives were saved because of a community interested in making data better for all.

Imagine that sense of community being applied to important issues facing today’s society – such as issues facing the poorest of the poor around the world. Data is part of the picture of course, from the macroeconomic issues of aid money to the treatment of individuals in country.

For example, some estimates put the number of children dying daily worldwide of treatable diseases like diarrhea and TB at around 29,000, the largest part being in Africa.

Money is sent to Africa. Billions in fact. So what is the problem? There are many competing view points, from the need for more money on a per capita basis to aid money being the root of the problem in the first place.

This is a debate that might be of interest to many people worldwide and a large community of interested and engaged global citizens might bring innovative solutions to the dire situation.

People want tools to connect the dots between data and the world around them. We need a way to bring numbers to people in a way that is engaging. In ways that can empower people to make a difference.

So, how are innovations in technology contributing to the issue?

First is the combination of technology with people. Opinions and dialogue need to be expressed for healthy civil society. That is where some of the concepts of Web2.0 come in. Web2.0 implies strong community, allows free expression and debate – and the technologies now exist to do this.

Another example is that new tools are changing the way data is used and understood. The key is access to data from all different places – because insights aren’t always confined to one indicator, methodology or organization.

We believe that an important impact of a site like Swivel is that the numbers will stay grounded in reality by being exposed to lots of different types of people. When people work with data for a living, it is easy to forget that numbers have meaning in the physical world. They not only represent numbers of items sold but also number of lives saved or lost. There are people behind the numbers and having those numbers be used and discussed fosters global responsibility for the world we share.

Making data engaging, available and useful to all will bring greater clarity spurring insight and application.

Improving numerical literacy will help keep governments honest. Data and tools in the hands of all empower civil society. Ultimately, transparency leads to better data, better decisions, better government, better lives. Ultimately, hopefully, breaking the vicious cycle of data apathy.

[a reprint with my own permission from the Swivel blog]

The idea that the success of a nation is normally viewed solely in terms of the Gross Domestic Product has always struck me as strange. After all, don’t things like; divorce, toxic waste, natural disaster, war and other unsavory events contribute positively to the GDP? Surely there are more comprehensive ways to take stock of how we are doing as a nation.

Last week while in Turkey at the OECD hosted “World Forum – Measuring and Fostering the Progress of Societies” I had the honor and rare opportunity to meet Jigmi Y. Thinley, Minister of Home and Cultural Affairs of Bhutan, who has been tasked to redefine the meaning of progress for his country.

In the 70s, the King of Bhutan developed an indicator he coined “Gross National Happiness,” which aims to measure well-being and quality of life in terms of happiness rather than income. It is a novel idea, and of course not without criticism. Defining “happiness” is subjective and no definition could mean happiness to everyone all the time. Nonetheless, it is an interesting first step to consider the happiness of citizens as an important component to determining the health of a nation, regardless of how difficult it is to measure.

One of the outcomes of the World Forum was the Istanbul Declaration, where “participants agreed on the need for national statistical offices, academics and public and private bodies to work with civil society on new approaches going beyond conventional economic indicators such gross domestic product (GDP).” There have been posts about the declaration on TechCrunch and O’Reilly Radar as well.

Swivel is interested in data of all sorts. If you have ideas for how you might like to see the progress of society measured, we’d love to hear your ideas – and of course see the data!