Page 36 - IB AUG 2019

InDepth
Data driven

A portal to better decision-making

By Samantha Magick

CONNECTING decision makers with data, information and
knowledge is the aim of a new initiative of the Pacific Community
SPC, the Pacific Data Hub. The hub responds to many fact that
across SPC, and within the region, there have been data portals
and websites disseminating data, as well as enormous quanti-
ties of data sitting on office hard-drives. This data is sometimes
inconsistently managed, doesn’t always adhere to metadata
standards, and most of all is hard to find.
Sioeli Tonga is the Lead Solutions Architect/Acting Program
Manager for the Pacific Data Hub. He sat down with Islands
Business in Noumea to explain why we need the hub, and how
it might improve the lives of Pacific peoples.
IB: What is the hub designed to do for member Sioeli Tonga Photo: Samantha Magick
states and the people of the Pacific?

Sioeli Tonga: The program aims to connect users with data, it. We feel it is important to get that value very early in the piece.
information and knowledge about the Pacific and make it easy
to access news. We want to establish an open data ecosystem IB: What are the sources of the data you are cur-
with our development partners, working closely with our member rently pulling?
countries, and this is an ecosystem which will cater for the needs
of data users, will also establish sustainable data infrastructure, Tonga: At the moment its internally-held data sets from within
will work with data providers and provide data for reuse and the SPC but we’re also pulling in data and information from part-
innovation, while respecting sovereignty and ownership, re- ner organisations like SPREP. The IAEA (International Atomic
specting and preserving our cultural, traditional knowledge, and Energy Agency) has also reached out to us to publish their col-
protecting privacy. lection on the Pacific, but we’re looking at all potential sources
We see many ways in which data and information knowledge of data. And that in itself is quite ambitious and there are many
relating to the Pacific can be used. Providing a platform that makes challenges with that. Many of those challenges are just internal
it easy for governments, researchers, civil society groups and problems in terms of building data management capacity within
private sector to discover, link and correlate lots of data sets, we SPC and then working with our partners to extend that to the
see lots of potential for innovation to solve problems and create region and our countries as well.
new economic benefits.
IB: Will there be opportunities to link into national
IB: You’ve also created dashboards. Will you con- data bases as well, like Bureaus of Statistics?
tinue to do this and provide some level of analysis
for users? Tonga: Absolutely. Our divisions already do lots of work with
the different ministries and they are producing data sets out of
Tonga: It’s all well and good having a platform where you can the work they are doing with the ministries. We’re the stewards
find data, it’s all there, it’s nicely catalogued and searchable. And and custodians of lots of data sets for the Pacific. The statistics
that’s what many open data portals set out to do, just to make offices for the countries is a good example as we’ve been help-
the data available and its up to users to do what they can with ing to build their data dissemination platforms, that’s a big part
it, but we feel it is important for the Pacific that we also connect of the work that our stats division is doing with the countries.
people with data in meaningful ways so show them examples So we do have access to that internally but it is not automatic
of insights, connect them with the analysis and knowledge that access because the program is SPC, we still need to go through
has been produced from the data and information, so it’s not just the protocols for acquiring data from the different ministries and
about a fancy platform where people can go and find data, but setting up the data access agreement to make sure that they’re
its’ also about connecting people in a meaningful way with the comfortable for us to disseminate data in different ways and not
data and information. necessarily the intended purpose that they thought they were
That involves connecting directly with policy makers, exploring releasing data under.
the policy challenges that our people have, that our governments
have, and looking for opportunities where providing evidence and IB: Is that coordination piece difficult?
data will help and inform their decision making.
We feel its important from the start to connect people with in- Tonga: Yes that’s one of the challenges and we’re only scratching
formation that’s already available. People will quickly glaze over the surface of a huge iceberg I think. We don’t underestimate it,
the data portal if they can’t on their own, extract any value from we think there’s a lot of advocacy work we need to do and that’s
36 Islands Business, August 2019