Data collection and analysis tools for food security and nutrition

 [i]nternational development and 
humanitarian organizations are increasingly 
calling for digital data to be treated as a public 
good because of its value in supplementing 
scarce national statistics and informing 
intervention 
(Taylor, 2016, p. 1) The situation becomes 
particularly delicate when datasets contain 
information of a personal nature, raising 
important questions regarding who should claim 
ownership of such data (something we turn to 
next). With the rapid diffusion of smartphones 
and internet-based personal services, incredibly 
large amounts of data, including personal data, 
are currently owned by relatively few large 
private companies in the information industry. 
This has led to the emergence of commercial 
data-access services and to various proposals 
intended to favour a broader circulation of data, 
including through 
data philanthropy (Lapucci 
and Cattuto, 2021), an approach that does not 
question the legal ownership of the data by the 
private companies that collect and store them.
THE QUESTIONS OF DATA OWNERSHIP 
AND THE SOCIAL VALUE OF DATA
Taylor’s (2016) article, from which the quote in 
the previous section is taken, is entitled “The 
ethics of big data as a public good: which public? 
Whose good?”, making it very clear that, in order 
to support the vision of data as a public good, we 
must answering these two fundamental questions 
– Which public? and Whose good? The questions 
are particularly relevant for what is considered 
personal data, that is, data that reflect personal 
attributes of individuals and for which full open 
access — which would appear to be the obvious 
choice for public data—would risk violating the 
rights to privacy of the concerned individuals.
On one hand, there is likely ample consensus that 
personal data should belong to the individuals to 
whom they refer, who should be able to decide 
what use can or cannot be made of such data. 
On the other hand, personal data may have a 
tremendous importance in many areas for which 
they need to be accessed and actively used by 
people and institutions other than the individual 
21 To provide the following table contains the number of “hits” produced by queries run on 25 May 2022, on various web-based data repositories, 
using specific keywords:
22 For more information, see 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft
.
23 For more information, see 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license
.
24 For more information, see 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Initiative
.
repository
website
No of 
datasets
keyword
agriculture
food
food security
nutrition
Harvard dataverse
https://dataverse.harvard.edu/
156,062
6,404
8,334
910
1,864
International Household 
Survey Network (IHSN)
http://catalog.ihsn.org/
9,188
2,876
2,139
805
706
World Bank microdata 
catalogue
https://microdata.worldbank.org/
3,820
634
891
1,345
408
The Australian Data 
Archive
https://dataverse.ada.edu.au/
1,616
14
104
6
70
DataverseNL
https://dataverse.nl/
5,963
46
51
1
6
DataverseNO
https://dataverse.no/
1,228
12
47
0
6

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5 
INSTITUTIONS AND GOVERNANCE FOR FSN DATA COLLECTION, ANALYSIS, AND USE
to whom they refer. Access to personal data can 
be important, for example, for health, security or 
administrative reasons, or to enable the provision 
of personal services. In the context of FSN, as set 
forth in this report, individual data collected via 
surveys has great importance for FSN planning 
and action, and broader access to such data 
allows for better understanding of issues such as 
the determinants of people’s access food and the 
most effective means to properly address various 
forms of malnutrition.
25 Having the legislation for personal data protection in place, 
however, is only the first necessary step towards effective protection. 
Effective protection requires that an independent and active data 
protection authority exists to support the individuals’ ability to 
enforce their rights under the law. A recent report (World Bank, UNSD 
and Paris21, 2022) shows however that a big gap exists between 
low- and high-income countries with respect to data protection 
authorities, as they have been established in only 24 percent of low-
income countries, compared to 81 percent of high-income countries, 
by 2021.
The tension between the personal right to privacy 
and the value of broad data use has led legislators 
throughout the world to take steps intended to 
keep data open (thus allowing the use of personal 
data for research, development and humanitarian 
intervention) while subjecting it to personal 
data protection norms designed to protect the 
individuals’ right to privacy (
SEE BOX 30
).
25

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DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS TOOLS FOR FOOD SECURITY AND NUTRITION
BOX 30:
PERSONAL DATA PROTECTION AND THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY
Personal data protection guarantees are foreseen in most legislations throughout the world and in the UN System.
For example, the Charter of the Fundamental Rights of the 
European Union
, under Article 8, states that:
1. 
Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.
2.
Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned 
or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected 
concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified.
3. 
Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority. (Office Journal of the 
European Union, 2016., p. 7).
The European Union’s legal protection framework is implemented through a specific regulation, commonly referred 
to as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
In the 
United States of America
, although there is no all-encompassing federal legislation that ensures the privacy 
and protection of personal data similar to the European Union’s GDPR, a combination of legislation at the federal and 
state levels, administrative regulations, and industry-specific self-regulation guidelines provides protection that – 
some authors argue – is even greater than that of the European Union (Boyne, 2018).
In 
China
, the Personal Information Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China (Chairman’s Order No. 91) 
(the PIPL) was adopted by the 30th session of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People’s Congress of 
the People’s Republic of China on 20 August 2021 and implemented as of 1 November 2021. As a fundamental law 
equivalent to the European Union’s GDPR, the PIPL has gained much attention since its first draft was released in 
October 2020.
In dealing with personal data, organizations within the 
UN System
are encouraged to follow a series of principles 
intended to:
(i) harmonize standards for the protection of personal data across the United Nations System Organizations;
(ii) facilitate the accountable processing of personal data for the purposes of implementing the mandates of the 
United Nations System Organizations; and
(iii) ensure respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of individuals, in particular the right to privacy 
(UNSCEB, n.d.).
(For more information, see 
https://unsceb.org/principles-personal-data-protection-and-privacy-listing
).
88 
]

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INSTITUTIONS AND GOVERNANCE FOR FSN DATA COLLECTION, ANALYSIS, AND USE
Such data protection norms include avoid 
assigning explicit property rights on personal data 
to anyone
26
and rely on the principle of informed 
consent to grant the right to use the collected 
information, including the possibility that the 
data may be shared with others (for example, for 
research purposes) as the mechanism to ensure 
the protection of individuals’ right to privacy. 
Thus far, this has been considered a reasonable 
compromise between the two competing needs 
of ensuring protection while allowing adequate 
circulation of data. It is useful to note, however, 
that informed consent implies that access to 
personal data is only granted for the specific 
purposes stated in the signed informed consent 
form. At least in theory, this should not be 
configured as a 
sale of the data itself (that is, a 
transfer of ownership), which would have required 
the assignment of legally binding private property 
rights on the data to the individual to start with.
The continued evolution of information and 
communication technology, however, has 
presented new challenges regarding privacy, 
control and dissemination of personal data. When 
personal data was collected mostly via face-to-
face interviews by entities such as NSOs, subject 
to strict control of the public authority, informed 
consent was relatively easy to obtain and generally 
sufficiently safe to protect privacy. With the spread 
of internet and mobile phone-based services, 
however, collecting personal data has become 
both much easier and much more pervasive, but 
also, potentially, much more dangerous.
First, the scope of what can be considered 
personal data has broadened. Even in surveys, 
in addition to information that is willingly 
and directly provided, the use of these new 
technologies may involve the collection 
of personal information in a way that is 
not immediately transparent to the survey