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UN Regional Hubs for
Big Data

The UN Global Platform has 4 physical hubs all over the world working together to educate, collaborate and develop new technologies to work with new Big Data sources and methodologies.

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Regional Hub for Big Data in China
in Support of the United Nations Global Platform

Hangzhou, China

Digital mobile collaborative office management

For management, communication and cooperation, targeting staff of the Regional Hub in China and of the UNGP as well as various international and domestic users

Capacity building, examination and certification in Big Data

Targeting the international and domestic statistical departments, experts, scholars, enterprises and domestic government agencies and other users.

Statistical Big Data Application

Application platform of the regional hub in China targeting NSOs, statisticians, scholars and companies at home and abroad as well as domestic government agencies

SDG database

For the presentation, sharing and exchange of SDG data, targeting the needs of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development

Displaying and sharing innovative results

Of statistical Big Data, targeting innovative data solutions from the UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics;

About

The Regional Hub in China will coordinate the respective strength of NBS, Zhejiang Province and UN DESA in the use of big data for statistics, gather their data resources on the big data application platform, actively launch collaborative research projects, and share and promote research findings, so that the UN can further its research on the use of big data for statistics, the NBS can see deeper integration of its statistical work and big data, Zhejiang province can provide more efficient and convenient governance services, and the three can realize their collaboration goal of "fusion of technology, data and knowledge."

It will work towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, towards serving for the global statistical cooperation, for the statistical reform and innovation as well as a modern statistical system, and towards enhanced governance capability. To this end, they will share their knowledge, data and methods, integrate advanced big data technology and methods, and build a world-recognized center for the use of big data for statistics that disseminates knowledge and boasts leading technology and innovation capacity.

Location:

Zhejiang Guodiao Building, Tianmushan Road, Xihu District, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province

Organizations:

  • National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)
  • The People's Government of Zhejiang Province
  • UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA)

Recent Events:

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Regional Hub for Big Data in Africa
in Support of the United Nations Global Platform

Kigali, Rwanda

Collaboration

In addition to the United Nations and UNECA, NISR is collaborating with local universities and both public and private institutions in Rwanda.

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Privacy

Rwanda is in the process of putting in place its Data Protection Law that will improve the accessing, sharing, analysis and use of big data without breaching the privacy of individuals

Rwanda's progress in embracing Big Data

In 2017, the cabinet approved the data revolution policy and its implementation is under the coordination of NISR. This policy has the mandate to build big data and analytics capabilities within Rwanda.

The 5th International Conference on Big Data for Official Statistics held in Kigali in May 2019, reinforced the role of Big Data in the era of Sustainable Development Goals.

Big Data is important to high-level decision making and is among the aspects of the 4th Industrial Revolution that is already picking up pace across the world as firms seek to increasingly use data to improve productivity, efficiency and value.

Many areas were identified where big data analytics will be used to avail useful insights for evidence-based decision making, and they span many sectors of country life. These include the analysis of satellite imagery to monitor crop production and the analysis of mobile phone data, including transactions, to understand the population's mobility.

Some institutions and companies in Rwanda are establishing data science teams that will help them to deal with extremely large data sets and computationally analyse them to reveal patterns, trends, and associations, especially relating to human behaviour and interactions.

To further strengthen the use of Big Data across the continent, Rwanda will always be open for more strategic partnerships and collaboration with other institutions at national, regional and international levels. These partnerships are valuable to share experience towards leveraging opportunities offered by data science to solve existing problems and predicting the ones that may occur in the future.

About

In May 2019, the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR) inaugurated its brand new Training Centre that is designed to be a convenient environment for data access and capacity building. It will also host the NISR Data Science Campus that will be the hub of big data analytics and their applications. The big data hub will be an environment for capacity development activities in new areas of data analysis such as data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning and other big data related techniques, not only in Rwanda, but also in the region.

Given the relevance of the big data hub to Rwanda and Africa, NISR realizes that partnerships and collaboration with other institutions and organizations is needed to achieve its mission. It is in this context that, in March 2020, Rwanda signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the United Nations to operationalize this hub which is expected to start before the end of 2020. Furthermore, the MoU agreed that Rwanda would host the only big data regional hub for Africa.

Location:

Kigali, Rwanda

Organizations:

  • National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR)
  • Unied Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UN ECA)
  • UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA)

Regional Hub Website:

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Regional Hub for Big Data in Brazil
in Support of the United Nations Global Platform

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Hub Website

Workstreams

Strengthening ties and promoting cooperation between producers of official statistics in the Region

Supporting sharing of experiences and knowledge, promoting increased contact and integration between regional producers and users, and increasing use of the knowledge generated.

Training and fostering the interest of young statisticians on the use of Big Data in Official Statistics

Offering online courses and webinars, with theoretical content and hands on activities, on methods, techniques, and tools for the use of Big Data in Official Statistics.

Supporting research on the use of
Big Data and Data Science

Broadening the thematic scope of research on the use of Big Data in Official Statistics to gain experience in handling and processing this type of data; improving the accuracy and robustness of the results; developing protocols for incorporation of new data sources into the portfolio of Statistics Institutes in the Region.

Organizing and hosting seminars and conferences

Facilitate the exchange of information and contribute to the discussion on the use of new data sources and technologies, increasing involvement of Latin American and the Caribbean NSIs in developing new data sources, methods, and algorithms for the global statistical system.

About

The Regional Hub in Brazil aims to contribute to the advancement in the use of Big Data and Data Science to improve the production of official statistics, promoting the sharing of knowledge and the development of innovative initiatives in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Hub is based at the National School of Statistical Sciences (ENCE), an academic area of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The School will coordinate the efforts and contributions from different areas of the Institute in support of the activities of the Regional Hub. Founded in 1953, the School has a long tradition of training and research, working at the undergraduate and graduate levels, in addition to offering e-learning.

Partnership

The Hub's activities will be developed at national level in partnership between the various departments of the IBGE, other Government Agencies, Universities, and Non-Governmental Institutions. At international level, in partnership with the United Nations, other Regional and International Organizations, national statistical institutes from the region, and other academic and research institutes from outside Brazil. The Hub will benefit from IBGE's existing partnerships, such as with the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Brazilian Network Information Center (NIC.br), among others.

Background

Ongoing experiences in the Region will help to leverage the mission of the Hub. Various National Statistical Offices are already seeking to enhance the use of Big Data and Data Science to improve statistical and geoscientific production, in particular, the use of web scraping and satellite images.

Location:

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Organizations:

  • National School of Statistical Sciences (ENCE) of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE)
  • UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA)

Regional Hub Website:

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Regional Hub for Big Data in the United Arab Emirates
in Support of the United Nations Global Platform

UAE Hub Website

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About

The main objectives of the Regional Hub in UAE are the facilitation of projects in the use of Big Data and data science for official statistics and SDG indicators, the sharing of knowledge on newly developed methods, algorithms and tools, and the provision of training in the use of Big Data and data science for the community of official statisticians in the Arab region. To this end, the UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics will collaborate with the UAE in support of its Regional Hub, which is envisaged to be globally recognized as a collaborative and action-oriented knowledge, technology and innovation hub, which will bring innovative technology and data science methods in the use of Big Data together and will provide a much-needed platform to further the data science projects in UAE and other countries, especially developing countries.

More information coming soon!

Location:

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Regional Hub Website:

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