Visualizing Real-Time Data to Map Progress of the Belizean National Children’s Agenda

Seth Davis, Communications Officer, Community Systems Foundation

A DevInfo to Data For All Transition
To strengthen the national monitoring and evaluation capacity in Belize at the project, sector and thematic levels, as well as against national strategic plans and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Ministry of Human Development, Social Transformation and Poverty Alleviation launched BelizeInfo, an adaptation of DevInfo, in 2016. [1]

​Spanning across sectors, such as education, gender, health and social protection, BelizeInfo provides over 65,000 data points to all Ministries in Belize as well as to the public. [2] While BelizeInfo has worked well to manage collected data, Ministry counterparts have noticed a fundamental gap in Belize’s ability to disseminate and visualize real-time data.

To address this, Community Systems Foundation technical staff partnered with UNICEF Belize to host the Belize NCA workshop with the Monitoring & Evaluation subcommittee of the government. With the goals of increasing national access to real-time data, improving accountability and furthering the creation of data-driven policy interventions, the trainings focused on data migration, management and visualization to ensure these outcomes are met.

Following the initial mapping of relevant indicators from BelizeInfo to DFA Data Manager, government counterparts were trained on how best manage their data, add indicators to the system as well as how to use the import/export function. During this section of the training, participants also learned how the application can be used to manage data in a single sector and cross-sectorally by using a centralized data warehouse.

To visualize the migrated data related to the National Children’s Agenda (NCA), workshop participants designed and populated a real-time data dashboard to highlight the priority outcomes for the NCA. These areas include children being Active and Healthy, Achieving their Full Potential, being Safe and Protected from Harm, Economically Secure and Connected and Respected.

Additionally, participants began developing a dashboard for the National Women’s Commission to highlight priority areas of the National Gender Policy.

With a smooth and encouraging transition from the DevInfo platform to Data for All, Ministries within the Belizean government will now be able to disseminate and visualize real-time data in a way that was previously impossible. In this regard, the Belize NCA trainings demonstrate how national line ministries can collaboratively use the Data for All toolkit to manage and visualize real-time data to promote progress on national priorities and the SDGs.

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[1] Breaking News Belize. Ministry of Human Development to Launch BelizeInfo. September 2016. Accessed at: https://www.breakingbelizenews.com/2016/09/26/ministry-human-development-launch-belizeinfo/
[2] Breaking News Belize. Ministry of Human Development to Launch BelizeInfo. September 2016. Accessed at: https://www.breakingbelizenews.com/2016/09/26/ministry-human-development-launch-belizeinfo/