Play one: Explore the problem and how data can address it

Successful data access initiatives are underpinned by a clearly defined vision that outlines the impact you want to achieve in a specific community, market or region

By improving access to data and involving stakeholders across the initiative’s activities, organisations leading these initiatives are better prepared to address complex challenges and produce desired outcomes. Exploring the role of data within the problem can help you achieve this impact.

Having a clearly defined problem to be addressed by improving access to data and tackling a specific social, environmental or economic challenge will help focus your activities, communicate your vision to funders, and mobilise the resources and people needed to build or strengthen data infrastructure.

Activities in this play include:

• Exploring how your identified problem can be addressed through data

• Deciding what type of data infrastructure the initiative aims to support

• Carrying out initial research and engagement

By the end of this section you should be able to:

• Define how improving access to data can help address your problem

• Identify what research needs to be undertaken in order to carry out other plays, such as stakeholder mapping and logic modelling

• Decide the ‘use case’ and how it might be addressed through strengthening data infrastructure