There is a persistent and intuitively appealing idea that haunts labor market policy debates in developing economies: that jobs are a fixed pie, and if an older worker keeps a slice, a young person goes hungry. In countries where youth unemployment is stubbornly, painfully high – think Morocco at over 35 percent for those aged 15-24, or Brazil’s substantial informal workforce – it can feel almost morally obvious that older workers should step aside and make room.
Continue readingImproving the capacity of national statistical systems (NSSs) has long been a part of the 
global development agenda. The NSSs play an important role in modern economies. They provide stakeholders, ranging from policy makers to stock market analysts and the general public, with the data on the country’s socioeconomic developments. At the international level, monitoring global initiatives such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires high-quality data that are produced consistently across different national statistical systems.
Submitted by Haishan Fu On Thu, 06/14/2018
I’ve been thinking about the role of data and digital technology in today’s information landscape. New platforms and technologies have democratized access to much of the world’s knowledge, but they’ve also amplified disinformation that affects public discourse. In this context, the official statistics community plays a critical role in bringing credible, evidence-based information to the public.
Data and evidence are the foundation of development policy and effective program implementation, and countries need data to formulate policy and evaluate progress.
At the global level, the World Bank has a strong reputation in development data and has been highly effective in data production. It produces influential, widely used data and cross-country indicators that fill important niches, benchmark countries, and stimulate research and policy action.
Article published on http://www.worldbank.org on July 27, 2017.
The world has an ambitious goal to end extreme poverty by 2030. But, without good poverty data, it is impossible to know whether we are making progress, or whether programs and policies are reaching those who are the most in need.
Deadline: 08-Feb-2017 at 11:59:59 PM (Eastern Time – Washington D.C.)
This project seeks to document the third pillar of the work program, Using Data, similar to how OpenDRI has documented its first two pillars through the above publications. This pillar brings together ideas and efforts from the fields of risk communication, user-centered design, and civic technology to ensure that investments in generating, collecting and sharing data contribute to evidence-based and risk-informed policies, ideally causing change in policy and behavior. Further, the third pillar seeks to inform the ways in which OpenDRI designs projects falling under the first two pillars.
WASHINGTON, January 9, 2017—The inequalities that make some countries poorer than 
others include inequalities of information. To make sound decisions on economic development, policymakers need reliable and—just as important—readily accessible data. That is the concept underlying a new World Bank Group platform called TCdata360, an open platform for trade and competitiveness data from inside and outside the World Bank Group.
TCdata360 combines vetted datasets from more than 20 organizations—including the Bank Group, United Nations, World Trade Organization, World Economic Forum, and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development—in an interactive, easy-to-use platform. Busy policymakers, development practitioners, academics, and industry specialists can use the site to access, compare, and download timely data on some 2,000 indicators related to a wide variety of trade and competitiveness topics such as trade logistics, global value chains, investment climate, entrepreneurship, and the cost of business operations.
TCdata360 provides snapshots of countries’ economic performance on key indicators.
With the launch of a Center for Big Data Statistics (CBDS), CBS is initiating cooperation of an unprecedented scale in the field of Big Data. The CBDS involves national and international parties from government, the business world, science and education all
working together in the area of Big Data technology and methodology for the production of official statistics. The CBDS is launched officially on 27 September 2016.
Statistics Netherlands (CBS) and World Bank Group have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the desire to carry out activities conducive to helping developing countries improve their statistical systems for collecting, processing and disseminating quality and timely data for evidence-based policymaking in order to achieve their national development goals as strive towards the Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs).
Netherlands for the World Bank 