Deputy Director, Fraser Macdonald, writes about the immense value in cross-network learning based on his experience travelling to Nairobi to attend the third annual the Jameel Observatory Community of Practice meeting.

At the Data for Children Collaborative, we continually reflect on our own methods and seek opportunities to refine how we deliver on complex challenges. Response to March Dictionary Entry by Kristy Docherty on Collective Leadership. Crafted by Fraser Macdonald - Data for Children Collaborative, Deputy Director 

Generally, when it comes to collaborating, our attention is naturally concentrated on ‘what do we want to achieve?’ This answer is almost always focused on the task or the reason for collaborating in the first place.  This is not wrong, however, what if we took the time to think about how we would like to work as a group, to notice how we work, how we are interacting, and how we are behaving, as we collaborate? 

With climate change an ever-increasing presence in today’s news and media, a lot of talk is based around how policy today impacts the climate of the future. 

Working in a domain that has such high stakes around decisions that are made, given the impact on children directly, on service providers working with children or indeed on data and models, it is essential that all of our activities are directed by ‘good governance’.  

When offered the opportunity to work on an expert group report on Building Trust in the Digital Era, commissioned by the Scottish Government, our team leapt at the chance. Ethics is such a central part to our thinking at the Data for Children Collaborative that the idea that we could support work aimed at influencing change in this area really chimed with our broader goal of being ethical activists. 

At the Data for Children Collaborative, we love challenges. We are continually building challenge-led projects aimed at improving outcomes for children globally. We do this because we believe that they enable collaborative innovation, novel solutions, and real impact.

As an organisation that prides itself in collaboration, just how collaborative are we, and how can that be defined? Dictionary entry by our Director, Alex Hutchison.

Guest blog by Claire Barale, a PhD student at the Centre for Technomoral Futures, about Natural Language Processing (NLP): what is it and what are its limitations?

How does relational ethics help to navigate ethical challenges for data-driven innovation?

Guest blog by Viviana Cañón Tamayo, Frontier Data- programme specialist at UNICEF HQ, on her definition of frontier data.

As with any high-impact project, stakeholder engagement is crucial to its success. At the Collaborative, we have a simple philosophy – let’s create speed boats, not cruise ships’.

In recent years there has been a growing appetite for putting ethics at the core of emerging technologies. Why is this so important?

We sure don’t see many robots in the classrooms yet, so what do we actually mean by the term machine learning?

Our Director was talking about her job to a Primary 5 class this week (aged 9 and 10 year olds) during their careers week and it got her to thinking – do we all have a consistent understanding of what we mean by “data”?

Here at the Data for Children Collaborative with UNICEF, we provide the platform that brings together the right data, skills and expertise to help solve some of the most pressing challenges facing children across the globe. But what does it mean to call something a ‘data collaborative as a service?’

Something we have been keen to explore is how we can understand the value of our community engagement. We believe solving complex problems takes a community. But this has led to the question: “what do we mean by effective engagement, and how do we measure it?”

Knowledge Exchange, simply put, is the process of sharing information, ideas, and perspectives amongst individuals and organisations to enable new and impactful outcomes. In reality, we all practice a form of knowledge exchange in our daily lives – we communicate with our colleagues, peers, and friends.

Demonstrating impact can be a challenge in the development and humanitarian sector, and a Theory of Change is a key bridging tool to show how change will be effective to achieve intended impact.

Participation is much more than having a voice. It is about being informed, engaged and having an influence in decisions and matters.