International development is an incredibly broad field. It encompasses a wide range of issues, including natural disasters, conflict, and security, as well as a plethora of possible actions to address them. Many of these issues are overlapping and intersecting, unfolding simultaneously in the same location. As governments and international organizations try to develop effective solutions, they are in constant need of something critical: information. To know how to plan for the future, one must first know what happened in the past. This is where ‘Big Data’ can play an important role. Mass collections of data have proved helpful in addressing development concerns and devising new approaches, providing specific insights about what is happening on the ground. However, there are a number of implications, including privacy breaches and unethical practices, that come with employing Big Data, leading many to wonder if it is doing more harm than good.
Big Data is both a process and an entity. As a process, it involves the mass extraction of all sorts of information from a number of sources. This can include personal mobile devices, apps, government documents, and transaction records. A large portion of this is known as data exhaust — passively collected data from interactions with technology and media. As an entity, Big Data consists of all this data, both structured and unstructured. It comes in the form of formally organized information like databases, or disseminated particulars such as social media feeds.
The existence of Big Data and its collection has been significantly enhanced with the improvement and proliferation of communications technology over the years. The more people are online, the more behavioural data — daily online interactions, social contacts, and internet mobility — organizations are able to collect alongside easily accessible, more formal documents. The volume of data collected by different organizations varies greatly, depending on their purpose. Generally, organizations employ Big Data to gain insight into specific populations. For-profit companies may use structured data to make smarter investment decisions; others may utilize unstructured personal data to predict consumer behaviour. Big Data aims to strengthen the abilities of an organization so it can perform better in its field.
Such massive amounts of information have also been valuable in the field of international development. Whether addressing a conflict, curating a peace agreement, or deploying aid programs on the ground, organizations seek information and as much of it as they can get. They need to understand where efforts have worked and what those efforts were. Critically, they need to identify past failures to avoid repeating them.
There are nuances to every situation, and Big Data offers policymakers and researchers a pathway to understanding them. Particularly, the curation and implementation of evidence-based climate policy has relied on Big Data to develop workable and applicable strategies. The UN, for example, has made public its dedication to the integration of scientific evidence in decision-making with regard to its 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Big Data can be used for tracking environmental trends over time and understanding where action is most needed.
In another case, Big Data was utilized in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. Researchers from the Karolinska Institute and Columbia University discovered how to collect data from mobile phones and track SIM card locations. The method was used by the government and humanitarian agencies to monitor the movement of nearly 2 million SIM cards belonging to displaced refugees and respond to the crises. Organizations need to know where displaced people are concentrating and moving to provide the correct amount of resources to the right places. In this way, Big Data is used as an enhancement tool. The more information available about both the past and the present, the easier it is to devise more tailored, situation-specific solutions.
As development issues persist across the globe, there is a call for this data now more than ever. Though, as useful as Big Data may be in certain contexts, there are larger ramifications to consider. A significant issue with Big Data is the ease with which it invades personal privacy. In many cases, Big Data is used to create entire profiles of users for companies to analyze. User information is collected by the company for various purposes, which could be problematic, creating social tensions or selling personal user data. The lack of regulation worsens this problem. Because Big Data is a new phenomenon built on ever-changing technology, there is little to no unified legal framework addressing it; different regions, governments, and organizations approach this issue in their own way, if they address it at all. Organizations can often collect as much data as they deem necessary.
Jonana Radin, in her 2017 study on Big Data, examines how this collection of Big Data has upheld harmful patterns of settler colonialism and has harmfully utilized data beyond its original purpose. Her work details an epidemiological study on Indigenous members of the Gila River Indian Community Reservation, which led to the creation of the Pima Indian Diabetes Dataset (PIDD). After experiencing a massive increase in Type II Diabetes, members of the Reservation were asked every year to participate in multi-year-long studies of the condition. They were never compensated, nor were they informed of how their personal medical data would be used.
The data was stored in PIDD, which soon became a tool used by various organizations to train AI and refine algorithms which are unrelated to diabetes. The data became free reign for any researcher or organization that could get their hands on it. Members of the Reservation grew tired of being constant subjects of inquiry, and have since put in place procedures restricting access to their community and refusing data collection.
This case illustrates the harm Big Data can cause when misused. PIDD was seen as nothing more than a collection of information, rather than an archive of lived experiences. Data encapsulates real-life circumstances with deeper meanings and meaningful implications. Unfortunately, organizations often overlook this as they use and reuse it.
There is a clear place for Big Data in the world of development. If used correctly, it could both refine and strengthen efforts in various fields; it has the ability to help make significant positive change. At the same time, it is important to ask what is being sacrificed for such benefits. Is civilian privacy worth more coordinated development efforts? Can there be a future for Big Data without the crossing of these boundaries? Can the improvement of international development occur without the help of Big Data? The answers to these questions are not clear, but they will have to be sought out in the years to come as the presence of Big Data continues to grow.
Edited by Mia Alexander
This is an article written by a Staff Writer. Catalyst is a student-led platform that fosters engagement with global issues from a learning perspective. The opinions expressed above do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication.
