Giving Compass' Take:

• Devex reports on the United Nations' Centre for Humanitarian Data and how it will work as a comprehensive resource for those in aid responses.

• How will privacy work? Will partners in the sector be able to access what they need easily? There are lots of questions still to be answered, but the plans to this point sound promising.

• One thing to consider, at least when it comes to WASH funding, sometimes there needs to be less data, more action.

As the United Nations’ Centre for Humanitarian Data took shape last year, its founders had to think hard about what it would not be doing. It would not be the place where all humanitarian information, from cash transfer volumes to vaccination rates to rainfall, is analyzed. It would not handle big data, and it would not collect data itself.

Instead, after consultations, the goal set was to increase the use and impact of data across the aid sector. The overarching aim of the center, which is part of the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, is that “everyone involved in a humanitarian response has access to the data they need, when and how they need it, to make responsible and informed decisions.”

One long-term ambition is to create a “crisis dashboard,” so that anyone can promptly get a comprehensive assessment of how a region is faring in order to plan a humanitarian response. In the short term, however, its challenge is to meet a set of self-imposed progress indicators and prove to its backers that it is a necessary investment amid a growing field of organizations working on humanitarian data.

Read the full article about the UN's Center for Humanitarian Data by Vince Chadwick at Devex International Development.