Blog: Launch Workshop for 'Mobile Phone Data for Policy Program' of the World Bank

 

Back to back with the Netmob Conference, the World Bank held the launch workshop from Oct 7-10th for the first cohort of 18 countries of their new "Mobile Phone Data for Policy" program. This workshop was targeted at stakeholders from the 18 cohort countries, namely, mobile network operators, telecommunications regulation authorities and statistical offices to jointly develop use cases and grant proposals with the support of the country teams of the World Bank and selected researchers how mobile phone metadata can be used to support decision-making in their respective countries. Till Koebe, postdoctoral researcher at I2SC, accompanied the Mongolian delegation during the workshop, working with them intensely on the last two days on scoping their proposal. Many discussions across all tables came up around the financing mechanisms and data access/processing options. Next steps for the Mongolian delegation will include drafting a Memorandum of Understanding between the stakeholders as a foundation for data sharing. I2SC will continue to accompany the process with technical expertise, if needed. Thanks a lot to Trevor Monroe, Sveta Milusheva, Paul Blanchard and the others for this excellent idea of combining an academic conference with a policy workshop and creating interactions between these two events in a seamless and productive manner! Great Work!

 More information on the Mobile Phone Data for Policy Program can be found here: https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/global-data-facility/brief/putting-mobile-phone-data-to-work-for-policy

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