Solutions remain a chimera while data feeding frenzy rages

We like quick fixes, which is why we like data. It has the added benefit of being an arm’s-length way of dealing with people because dealing with people is messy and difficult — especially if those people have problems.

There is this strange idea that somehow, if enough data is collected, we will be able to make beautiful inclusive and responsive policies, craft conversation-igniting journalism, and save the world. That is just not true. Data will not save us.

Ten years ago, the buzzword was “quantum”: “quantum drive”, “quantum washing powder”, “quantum computing”. If “quantum” was somewhere in the elevator pitch, you were sorted. This was followed by “green economy”, “innovation”, “sustainability”, “synergy”, “machine learning”. The latest word to find its way into this cycle of language abuse is “data”. “Big data”, “data deluge”, “data journalism”. But how does data actually solve anything?

Much has been promised in the name of data, but comparatively little has been achieved. The major area in which big data is useful is tailoring ads to a social media experience.

Data can help only when someone turns it into information and there is someone to act on that information. In the places in which information and understanding is needed, the gaps are plugged with useless digits.

Not all data is useful. This problem is particularly evident in SA and elsewhere on the continent. Data appears to be the foundation of “evidence-based decision making”, a catchy phrase in the halls of the AU and Parliament, but while there are frantic efforts to grab as much data as possible — like someone given a minute to shove as many sweeties into their pocket as possible — there is dearth of imagination about how that somehow becomes policy.

I see this often as a science journalist. A scientist phones, incredibly excited because they managed to collect “all this data”. They have mapped Joburg traffic, or digitised the records of climate in a small corner of SA, or collected satellite data of water bodies in southern Africa. What happens to that data? If they are lucky, it is turned into an academic paper and can be cited by other academics about how this useful technique can collect all this data. But for the most part nothing happens.

A researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research used satellites in 2014 to show most (60%) of SA’s water bodies were plagued by eutrophication, which happens when nutrients (such as fertiliser run-off or sewage) collect in dams, giving rise to toxic bacteria that poison the water. This is a national crisis. Three years after this disclosure, the situation is worse. Because it is very easy to ignore data — there is, after all, so much of it around.

WHAT HAPPENS TO THAT DATA? IF THEY ARE LUCKY, IT IS TURNED INTO AN ACADEMIC PAPER. BUT FOR THE MOST PART NOTHING HAPPENS

The same thing is happening in journalism: if you want a grant or fellowship, sneak “data” into the proposal. Money is being thrown at data journalism, where you take these databases, scrape them, tweak them, whisper magic words over them, and suddenly SA-changing journalism miraculously emerges out of them. But they very seldom yield results. More success would follow if that money was used to pay journalism interns to sit in on city council meetings. At least then there would be the certainty of getting some good stories out of the investment.

Because policy makers want meaning; they want stories. They want stories based on data, which have information at their core. But data in and of itself is useless to solve problems. People are needed to do that.