humanitarian.info

It bears repeating, especially when the guy doing the repeating isn’t exactly “one of us”:

The federal government has made aggressive use of so-called data-mining tools since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as counterterrorism officials in many intelligence agencies have sought to analyze records on travel habits, calling patterns, e-mail use, financial transactions and other data to pinpoint possible terrorist activity… But there is little evidence to confirm that the techniques work to actually find terrorists, despite the growing use in the last seven years, committee members said…

“More data does not mean better data,” said William J. Perry, the former defense secretary who was co-chairman of the panel

That’s right, folks – despite the work of the Supercrunchers, more data does not mean better data. What’s important is what comes before the data and after the data – planning exactly what you’re going to collect and how, and analysing and applying what you’ve collected. If you haven’t got those right – for instance, if you’re handing out a “rapid” assessment that’s 40-odd pages long – then any data collection is likely to yield less-than-useful results.

I’m thinking specifically about this sort of field-based data collection, of course, the processes that require a heavy investment and careful management (because they’re taking place at the sharp end of an emergency). The key to success is to focus on the most essential key indicators, and be very clear about exactly what you expect to learn  from them. Think of it this way – you’re not looking for an in-depth photo essay that tells the whole story, but a polaroid snapshot of the scene that you can refer to later.

A massively detailed picture isn’t going to be any use to anybody – it takes too much time to gather, it takes too many resources to analyse, it’s out-of-date too quickly and it’s rarely possible to match the data collection process to the form. So boil those forms down people, boil ‘em right down until there’s barely anything left. Then boil ‘em down again. Then give them to me so I can boil ‘em down even more…

(HT: Siva Vaidhyanathan)