Stories, ideas, and updates from DGers around the world

Yesterday USAID launched its first-ever Digital Strategy, which aims to bring coherence and direction to programs and approaches already employed by the agency. We found a lot to like, but also some key misses that could limit the impact on USAID’s work. Here are five highlights recommendations for improvement.

As experts scramble to better understand why Covid-19 can impact individual patients so differently, a growing body of evidence suggests that one factor contributing to the severity of the disease is whether the patient is a smoker. Could enhanced tobacco control policies be another tool for governments fighting the virus?

Covid-19 has changed the way many of us work & engage across teams. As with most organizations, DG’s DC-based team became fully remote a few weeks ago. While this was a shift for some of our staff, most DGers are globally-based and had already been working remotely. We want to take a moment to look at what we have been doing all along and what we have added to keep our team connected and supported.

From our experience understanding data use, the primary obstacle to measuring and organizational learning from feminist outcomes is that development actors do not always capture gender data systematically. What can be done to change that?

As we approach Beijing+25, awareness about the literal value of gender equality continues to rise—but actual progress has stalled. The 2020 World Economic Forum Gender Gap Report reveals women’s under-representation is most acute in data, digital, and technology fields that will drive economic growth over the next decade. According to the report, just 12 percent of cloud computing, 15 percent of engineering, and 26 percent of data and artificial intelligence professionals are women.

March is International Women’s History Month. Throughout the next weeks, DG will be publishing a series of blogs that highlight and honor the work that we and others are doing to support the vital role of women. We’re kicking off the series with this post, highlighting the importance of gender data.

In line with Development Gateway’s commitment to using open-source technology, and building on the transparency and community benefits we’ve seen from opening the Aid Management Platform (AMP) source code last year, DG is pleased to announce that we’ve made the AMP Offline application fully open-source.

​​​​​​​Last month, in partnership with the National Civil Aviation and Meteorology Authority (ANACIM), DG held a co-design workshop to better understand the visualization needs around agro-climatic data. We worked with ANACIM’s Multi-disciplinary Working Group (GTP), to reflect on the content and design of AD3’s interactive platform, and decided how best to present each indicator to facilitate decision-making.

The timely availability of high-quality, affordable seeds is critical to improving food security, resilience, and livelihoods for smallholder farmers in Africa. In partnership with TASAI, Inc., DG is proud to announce the launch of the TASAI VISTA program.

Throughout 2019, DG furthered our mission of supporting the use of data, technology, and evidence to create more effective, open, and engaging institutions. We leveraged our 2018-2021 Strategic Vision to deepen work in agriculture, extractives industries data, and inclusive programming.   There’s much more to read in Building Data Ecosystems: Removing Barriers & Connecting Users,