Objectives of a data landscape exercise
The main objective when conducting a data landscape exercise is to provide an overview of the availability, accessibility and quality of indicators that are of interest to the National Information Platform for Nutrition (NIPN).
The exact nature of the exercise will vary between countries, depending upon the range of indicators and data sources available, time constraints, and the priorities of the NIPN country team.
The exercise typically answers (fully or partially) the following questions:
- What are the existing information systems of interest to the NIPN? Which datasets and indicators are included? Are there important indicators that are not available? (see definitions below)
- What type of information is contained in the datasets? Is the information representative at the sub-national level? How frequent is the data collected? Which data quality control mechanism is applied? How has the data been collected?
- Where are the datasets? Which institutions have the mandate to collect and manage the datasets? How can the NIPN obtain legal access to the datasets?
The main output of this exercise is a Data Landscape Report (this section, pages 3 to 6).
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There are two resources that are important for all NIPN teams to be familiar with before starting the data landscape exercise:
- Typically, all countries have a National Statistical Plan that describes the statistical environment and national priorities.
- The Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement has produced Nutrition Information Mapping country reports and case studies which are a good starting point for the data landscape exercise but may not be sufficient.
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