Supporting data management in the National Youth Council

Partner: Bikas Udhyami

To help build the capacity for effective data management within the government’s National Youth Council, the D4D Program supported Bikas Udhyami to develop a Data Management Manual on best practices.

Government generates a wide range of data, however in most cases the sharing of this data (particularly in open format) is very limited. A contributor to this within some agencies is the absence of systematic and rigorous data management which hampers the ability for government to easily analyse and use their own data, let alone share the data with others.  

To help address this issue Bikas Udhyami worked with one government agency – the National Youth Council – to resolve the lack of clear guidelines and protocols on managing, archiving and transferring data. They first assessed the data management status and need through consultation meetings, workshops and a survey with officials from the National Youth Council. The findings were used to inform the development of a bespoke Data Management Manual and Toolkit. This included modules on the basic concepts of data with details of the current data flows in addition to instructions for the identification, collection, processing, storage, dissemination and handover of data. Tools and templates were developed as part of this to support the use of Excel to manage and analyze data; to support the development of data management directives, standard operating procedures and protocols; to support the use of data for annual and progress reports; to support the development of descriptive statistics; and to support the development of data visualizations.

To encourage use of the Manual and Toolkit Bikas Udhyami trained National Youth Council officials and provided assistance with implementation of the improvements. Through this, Bikas Udhyami hopes to strengthen data management practices within one part of government and help lay the groundwork for future publication of open data.