AudiencScapes

By Hannah Bowen, Africa Research Analyst, InterMedia

In a recent AudienceScapes qualitative study, policymakers in Ghana described a development policy information paradox: on the one hand, they are starving for critical data that should form “the basis for making informed judgment,” as one politician put it. On the other hand, however, they find that their agencies’ limited capacity to organize, prioritize, and make use of the information coming in already sometimes leaves them drowning.

The lack of hard data, policymakers warned, leaves open the door for policymaking built on less solid foundations—nepotism, personal gain, or any manner of corruption. For example, one policymaker offered a purely hypothetical (but no less vivid) example of what the data gap might mean: Ideally, he said, the country’s scarce transportation budget should be allocated to building rural roads according to an analysis of which routes are likely to make the best contribution to Ghana’s national development, based on social data, agricultural production data and other key statistics.

“But because I don’t have the data, I don’t have the capacity to make the [proper] analysis which would give me the possibility to make informed choices. So don’t be shocked if all the roads go to Cape Coast (I hear the president is from Cape Coast!), just like all the roads led to Kumasi in the previous administration [A reference to the previous president of Ghana, John Kufuor, who was from Kumasi]. How can you blame them, because we don’t have the information to make informed choices?” He stressed that when decisions are made without data, even if they are sound decisions, they are open to accusations of bias and corruption.

More information is needed—not only to build better roads, but to build trust in the policymaking process. However, more information is not the whole answer; in some ways there is already too much information available for existing information management systems to handle. As one government official painted the scene, the biggest problem is “[a] very archaic document storage system… I mean, you go to a ministry, you see physical piles on somebody’s desk.” There were calls from all sides for digital archiving, along with support from development partners for the hardware, software, and staff that would be required for turning raw data and reports into policy-relevant analysis.

Another challenge highlighted by Ghanaian policymakers was the lack of institutional memory. Even in cases where solid information on the policy process exists, policymakers fear that it can easily be lost as soon as the political tide turns.

For example, In describing the recent transition from a New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential administration to a National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration, one interviewee pointed out the lack of systems to ensure that key information was passed on—and noted that this had also been a problem when power was previously transferred from the NDC to the NPP. The advisor said that records kept by the local UN Development Programme office were able to fill some gaps where the previous administration did not leave records, but such backup services are not always available.

The policymakers did offer some suggestions for how the international development community can help alleviate both the famine and the flood: making national data on development topics like health and agriculture readily available, and in particular providing data disaggregated by key demographic categories like gender; helping to build up government agencies’ data-collection capacity; supporting digital archives through technical assistance and investment in hardware and software; assist in strengthening institutional memory; and ensure that the development policy information provided to government is targeted, relevant, and easy to digest.

Related:

Ghana Country Profile

Youth Media Culture Takes Shape in Ghana