• India has joined the UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics (UN-CEBD). 

• The UN-CEBD was created to further investigate the benefits and challenges of Big Data, including the potential for monitoring and reporting on sustainable development goals.

What is Big Data?

• The volume of data in the world is increasing exponentially. In 2020, 64.2 zettabytes of data were created, that is a 314 per cent increase from 2015. 

• A large share of this output is passively collected data deriving from everyday interactions with digital products or services, including mobile phones, credit cards, and social media. 

• Data is growing because it is increasingly being gathered by inexpensive and numerous information‐sensing mobile devices and because the world’s capacity for storing information has roughly doubled every 40 months since the 1980s.

• Big Data is a term used to describe data sources that are fast-changing, large in both size and breadth of information, and come from sources other than surveys. Examples include retail and payroll transactions, satellite images, and “smart” devices. Big Data also includes administrative data from national, state, and local governments, as well as third party providers. Typically, Big Data is “found” or “observed”, in that it is collected passively as the digital exhausts of personal and commercial activities.

• Its scale, diversity, and complexity require new architecture, techniques, algorithms, and analytics to manage it and extract value and hidden knowledge from it.

• In other words, Big Data is characterised by volume, variety (structured and unstructured data), velocity (high rate of changing) and veracity (uncertainty and incompleteness).

• The statistical community has the obligation of exploring the use of new data sources, such as Big Data, to meet the expectation of the society for enhanced products and improved and more efficient ways of working. 

• Data is the lifeblood of decision-making and the raw material for accountability. Today, in the private sector, analysis of Big Data is commonplace, with consumer profiling, personalised services, and predictive analysis being used for marketing, advertising and management. 

• Similar techniques could be adopted to gain real-time insights into people’s wellbeing and to target aid interventions to vulnerable groups. 

• New sources of data, such as satellite data, and new analytical approaches, if applied responsibly, can enable more agile, efficient and evidence-based decision-making and can better measure progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in a way that is both inclusive and fair.

• Big Data is considered as a possible means to support the monitoring of the 2030 Agenda, as it could improve timeliness and relevance of indicators without compromising their impartiality and methodological soundness.

What is UN-CEBD?

• The UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics (UN-CEBD) was created in 2014. 

The mandate of UNCEBD is to: 

i) Provide a strategic vision, direction and coordination for a global programme on Big Data for official statistics. 

ii) Promote practical use of Big Data sources, while finding solutions for many challenges (methodological, legal, security.

iii) Promote capacity-building.

iv) Advocate the use of Big Data for policy applications.

v) Build public trust in the use of Big Data for official statistics.

Organisational structure

• Australia was the first Chair of UN-CEBD.

• In 2016, Denmark took over the chairmanship. 

• The UN-CEBD consists of 31 member states and 16 international organisations. A plenary meeting of the full membership will be organised once a year, usually in conjunction with the annual Conference on Big Data for official statistics.

• With the development of the UN Global Platform at the end of 2017, the UN-CEBD created an additional Chair. At that point, Denmark was leading as co-Chair the task teams and the UK as co-Chair leading the development of the UN Global Platform. 

• Aside from changes in leadership, the management bodies evolved as well. When the regional hubs were created in 2019 a management board was needed to oversee the UN global platform and the regional hubs. 

• This led to installing the Advisory Board for the global platform chaired by the UK. 

• Having the UN-CEBD Bureau and the Advisory Board as two management bodies of the UN-CEBD led to some confusion about where decisions were taken. 

• Therefore, further changes were made, which have been described in the UN-CEBD report to the Statistical Commission in 2020. 

• The membership of the Advisory Board was expanded, and this board was given the role to provide more strategic direction, whereas the UN-CEBD Bureau was reduced in size and was taking charge of more day-to-day operational issues.

• Overall, the UN-CEBD is now led by one Chair (South Africa) and two vice-Chairs (Denmark and UK). 

• Denmark is coordinating the work of the Task Teams; and the UK is overseeing the developments of the UN Global Platform and the Regional Hubs. 

• The Chair will represent the UN-CEBD in any official function, such as the Statistical Commission, will lead the UN-CEBD plenary meeting and will lead the Advisory Board. The vice-Chairs take turns leading the UN-CEBD Bureau meetings.

Significance of India’s membership in UN-CEBD

• As part of the committee, India will contribute to shaping global standards and practices in harnessing Big Data and data science for official statistical purposes.

• India’s active engagement in the Committee of Experts will highlight its pioneering initiatives, including the establishment of the Data Innovation Lab and exploration of alternate data sources such as satellite imagery and machine learning for policy making.

• This membership is a strategic opportunity for India to align its domestic advancements in Big Data and data science with international goals, showcasing the country’s capability to lead transformative initiatives in the data domain.

• Big Data and advanced data science techniques have the potential to revolutionise the production and dissemination of official statistics.

• By integrating non-traditional data sources such as Internet of Things, satellite imagery, and private sector data streams, India aims to modernise its statistical processes, enhance the accuracy of estimates, and enable the timely availability of critical data for policy formulation and governance.

• This engagement will also complement India’s ongoing efforts to streamline statistical production and drive innovation in data collection, processing, and analysis to reduce the time lag in data availability.

• It will also improve decision-making and provide policymakers with real-time insights for evidence-based decisions, addressing key socio-economic challenges.

Manorama Yearbook app is now available on Google Play Store and iOS App Store