How Will the Data Be Used?
Judith Alpuche
For now, the Ministry is taking charge of the system, with other ministries of Government and even private entities contributing data for collation and analysis. But the main marker for its success will be how it is used. For more on that we spoke to Ministry C.E.O., Judith Alpuche.
Judith Alpuche, C.E.O., Ministry of Human Development
“It’s been very useful in terms of its intention in policy planning. Particularly for us at the ministry, we have very limited resources and so it is very important that within that context that we make the best possible decisions. And in order to make decisions about programs, program designs, the way things are working, to develop policy, you need dependable information. And so this has been very useful to us to monitor and evaluate certain programs that we have with international financial institutions and for us also to make programmatic decisions.”
Reporter
“Do you foresee that it will stand the test of time because we have several data system as well? Ministries use it for a couple of years and after that they forget to update it or just put it to the side.”
Judith Alpuche
“Well that’s why Mister Antrobus spoke of what we had done in the short term and then the medium term plans because what we are doing here is trying to push even further this culture of utilization of data. So there is always this lot of data and people would use it if it is available. But it is just going through the pain of finding it, digging it up, pulling it out; the administrative data from the various ministries, etc. But bringing it together like we have in Belize Info, under one umbrella, so that you won’t have to be going to the SIB and Central Bank and all over the place, it is collated in one area. We hope that this will help to continue to build that culture of using data.”
The Ministry is hosting workshops with other stakeholders to introduce the new system and collect suggestions on how to improve relationships with other data collecting agencies.
