The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to a range of adverse socio-economic and health impacts. These fallouts have exponentially increased the demand for reliable data – coming from healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the public at large. Indeed, data deficits are inhibiting the government from pursuing necessary and effective public policy actions, including vaccination drive, to combat the scourge.
In this context, it is critically important to understand the process of generating basic statistics in view of COVID-19 in Bangladesh. It is also important to assess how far these statistics are translated into policy responses by the government and how data gaps have posed challenges in terms of policy actions by the government. At the same time, identifying the best practices from global and national experience would be most useful for replication and adaptation in future policymaking.
These observations emerged at the virtual dialogue titled ‘Data-driven Policy Making During the Pandemic: Taking the Experience Forward’. The dialogue was organised by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) in partnership with the Embassy of Switzerland in Bangladesh on Thursday, 25 November 2021.
Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), chaired the session. He pointed out that demand for credible real-time data has increased manifold during the COVID-19 pandemic era. Indeed, the pandemic has improved awareness regarding the need for data and its use for decision making. In this context, he highlighted three sets of challenges – technical, institutional and political. He emphasised, among these three sets of challenges political buy-in is essential for addressing the technical and institutional challenges.
The keynote presentation at the dialogue was made by Mr Muntaseer Kamal, Senior Research Associate, CPD. The presentation focused on health-related data initiatives in Bangladesh taken in view of the COVID-19. It also highlighted the use of data for COVID-19 related public policy interventions and the effect of the pandemic on the flows of mainstream economic data. Citing the achievements and challenges pertaining to these initiatives, he mentioned that the future course of actions would critically hinge on three issues: the system-wide adaptation of the successful initiatives, enhanced scalability and ensuring human-resource-related/financial/organisational sustainability. It was mentioned that the creation of a ‘knowledge hub’ containing all relevant data, statistics, research and analysis contributed by both government and non-government entities might be beneficial to ensure system-wide adaptation. At the same time, the formation of a ‘data community’, following a whole of society approach, might be useful for scaling up the data initiatives. The sustainability of the data-related initiatives will require mobilisation of additional resources – financial, human resources and technical – from both domestic and foreign sources.
Dr Shahnaz Arefin, NDC, Secretary, Statistics and Informatics Division (SID), Ministry of Planning, was present as the Chief Guest at the dialogue. She mentioned that data interoperability is important and that data should be accessible to all relevant stakeholders to avoid duplication. To this end, a multi-stakeholder approach is required in the areas of data collection and coordination.
The Guest of Honour, H E Ms Nathalie Chuard, Ambassador, Embassy of Switzerland in Bangladesh, stated that the Embassy is supporting evidence-based research in order to complement the SDG attainment process of Bangladesh. Global partnership initiatives are also emphasising data issues at the national level. In this spirit, Switzerland will also continue to support the data ecosystem in Bangladesh as part of their country strategy.
Mr Mohammad Tajul Islam, Director General (Additional Secretary), Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, focused on the demand for quarterly data from various domestic and international agencies and the users of macroeconomic aggregates. Given the cyclic nature of the economy, quarterly updates are required to monitor the volatility and inform the policies accordingly.
Professor Mustafizur Rahman, Distinguished Fellow, CPD stated that cross-border information sharing is also relevant in the context of pandemic response as monitoring mobility of travellers has also become critical.
Mr Anir Chowdhury, Programme Advisor, Data Innovation Cluster, Aspire to Innovate (a2i) Programme stated that NID is the single thread that binds many data platforms together, but it is not enough. We are missing people who are aged under 18 and also the Rohingya community. In this connection, a unique ID combining NID, birth certificate, and other relevant information sources under the guidance of the CRVS (Civil Registration and Vital Statistic) system will help mitigate the issue. He also said, ‘data-sharing partnership works most effectively when there is a partnership platform to share data. It may start with rhetoric and documents, but it surely needs to graduate to scalable data sharing platforms, interoperability guidelines and use cases with visualisation requirements.’
Dr A M Zakir Hussain, Working Group Member, Bangladesh Health Watch (BHW), mentioned that unless we fix a target, we will not know how much data is needed and what variety of data is required and estimate the vaccine count. There are also concerns regarding the use of data in vaccine procurement and management and stakeholder engagement.
Data analytics is equally important as data availability, especially for policymakers, opined Dr Morseda Chowdhury, Director, Health, Nutrition and Population Programme (HNPP), BRAC. Analyses should be done at the repository level, and a unique ID is necessary not only for health issues but also for social security and other purposes. We should also ensure equity and capacity development across the system, particularly for the small organisations lacking the required resources.
Dr Rumana Huque, Professor, Department of Economics, University of Dhaka, suggested having a steering committee to coordinate data initiatives at the national level. Real-time data, regular data and reliable data have become a necessity now. IBAS code is required for some health expenses so that money can be properly used.
The session was followed by an open-floor discussion. At the virtual dialogue, high-level policymakers, researchers, development practitioners, academics, business leaders, civil society activists, international development partners, and journalists were present.