Data-driven strategies,

DATA IN ITS DNA

As for the Rockefeller foundation, using data to shape its strategies dates back to its origins more than a century ago, Mr. Khan said. “We coined the term scientific philanthropy, which was this idea of how do we get analytical and data driven around understanding problems, measuring the effect of interventions, and then scaling up the ones that really worked,” he added. “It has been part of our DNA for a while.”

Mr. Khan credited Rockefeller Foundation president Rajiv Shah with “putting data and technology kind of at the center of the vision for the foundation.” Mr. Shah joined the foundation as president in January 2017 and previously worked as the administrator of the US Agency for International Development.

“Data has always been really important,” said Mr. Khan. “What is different today is how available data is.” In the past, philanthropy involved investments in producing data, but that is no longer required because plenty of data is available these days. “The arc shouldn’t necessarily be in producing new data, but in taking the biggest advantage of all of the data that is there.”

THREE LEVELS OF OPPORTUNITY Mr. Khan said his foundation sees three levels of opportunity in digital data. At one level, it is exploring opportunities in “the digital state,” which encompasses “foundational technologies” like blockchain, geographic mapping services and digital ID, he said. For example, in the event of a hurricane or other humanitarian crisis, blockchain can help in building trust in the distribution of money and supplies, Mr. Khan said. Another example of blockchain usage is in providing verification processes for land rights, he added. “So much of the world has insecure land rights or informal land rights, and you could use blockchain technologies to create assets that are verifiable and stay with people over time.”

The second is to use the new technologies across all of its initiatives in health, food or American jobs. For example, one of the foundation’s grant recipients is working with partners to gather data on food waste in cities across the US. Thirdly, the foundation is looking internally to position itself in the evolving technological landscape. “We have to change our own culture, our own way of looking at things,” Mr. Khan said. “How do we think about tapping into all of the data that is available to inform our decisions? How do we get more data driven around shaping our strategies, and how do we monitor our work on a monthly basis versus waiting for a six-month evaluation to come back? There are many behaviors that we ourselves had to change as well. So we’re hitting at it from multiple levels.”

ADDRESSING CONCERNS OVER DATA

Technologies like digital ID systems have many benefits, but they need streamlining to ensure user privacy, which has been a concern with Aadhaar, he noted. Mr. Khan also pointed to the need to create “ethical frameworks” in order to provide the beneficiaries of these programs a voice in how they are designed.

The Rockefeller Foundation has provided funding for The Beeck Center for Social Impact & Innovation at Georgetown University to launch its Blockchain for Social Good project. The project aims to develop a framework for privacy and ethics in the implementation of blockchain in support of vulnerable and marginalized populations. Efforts are also underway to create standards of interoperability between those technologies, he said.

The technologies used ought to be designed in ways that counts “the voice of people who might otherwise be marginalized, or whose interests might otherwise not be represented,” said Mr. Khan. “Otherwise, it will be driven by the interests of big technology companies, and that is what we have seen in the past.” The next step is to assess “the degrees of freedom” program participants have with respect to their data. He pointed to the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe as one such effort “to put the control back into the user.”

Mr. Khan said he sees hope on two fronts with those efforts. “[First,] there are a lot of good resources that are getting put into play,” he noted. “Second, because we are so much more of a connected world, and we have greater awareness of what is happening, we can tap into the ingenuity of a lot more people. For example, it is exciting to see other countries looking to a country like India to learn about digital ID and ways to implement it. I don’t think 50 or 60 years ago, people would have been looking to the global set-up for solutions. Now we have more solutions emerging from more people, and if we can be disciplined about focusing on the best ones and scaling them up, then we have a larger number of solutions coming to bear.”