Delusional Altruism: Insights by Kris Putnam-Walkerly [Webinar]

Big Indicators Can Help Solve Big World Problems

Giving Compass' Take: • Stanford Social Innovation Review discusses the rise of Big Indicators — essentially a detailed pulse-taking on global systems — and how they will influence the way we address large-scale problems. • Are we doing enough in the nonprofit world to support the gathering better data collection and, thus, get more accurate indicators? How can we then put information into action? • Here's how to tackle challenges when it comes to demographic data. Remote sensing and big data allow us to collect unprecedented streams of observations about our planet and our impacts upon it, and dramatic advances in AI enable us to extract the deeper meaning and patterns contained in those vast data streams. The rise of the cloud empowers anyone with an Internet connection to access and interact with these insights, at a fraction of the traditional cost. In the years to come, these technologies will shift much of the current conversation focused on big data to one focused on "big indicators" — highly detailed, continuously produced, global indicators that track change in the health of the Earth’s most important systems, in real time. Big indicators will form an important mechanism for guiding human action, allow us to track the impact of our collective actions and interventions as never before, enable better and more timely decisions, transform reporting, and empower new kinds of policy and financing instruments. In short, they will reshape how we tackle a number of global problems, and everyone — especially nonprofits, NGOs, and actors within the social and environmental sectors — will play a role in shaping and using them.