Global Data Facility Mobile Phone Data Program for Policy: Cohort 1 Launch Workshop

Ronald Jansen is Assistant Director of the United Nations Statistics Division in New York. He is responsible for the Division’s work on data innovation and on capacity development strategies. This includes leading the intergovernmental processes for innovation of official statistics and implementing the capacity development pillar of the Cape Town Global Action Plan in support of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. He is specifically supporting the work of the UN Global Working Group on Big Data for Official Statistics, the UN Global Platform and its Regional Hubs. The platform is a collaborative environment for the global statistical community to jointly execute data innovation projects and share data, services, methods and expertise.

Julia Clark is a Senior Economist with the World Bank’s Identification for Development (ID4D) Initiative, which brings global knowledge and expertise across sectors to help countries realize the transformational potential of digital ID systems. She has worked extensively on the application of ID systems for development with ID4D and previously at the Center for Global Development (CGD). She currently leads ID4D’s research program and has authored or contributed to many flagship reports and guidance on good practices for ID systems, including the ID4D Practitioner’s Guide and the Principles on Identification for Sustainable Development. Clark holds an MA from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex and is completing her PhD at the University of California, San Diego.

Craig Hammer is a Senior Program Manager with the Development Data Group at the World Bank. He specializes in governance reforms, and in particular on open government and open data initiatives. His work at the World Bank has included strengthening laws, policies, and regulations focused on access to information, open government data, and data-driven decision-making for improved public service delivery to traditionally marginalized and underserved communities in more than 30 countries in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, South Asia, and Central Europe. He is a co-author of the 2021 World Development Report: Data for Better Lives, a Secretariat member for the World Bank’s Data Governance Body, and manager of The World Bank’s Global Data Facility, which is the Bank’s primary financing mechanism to support low- and middle-income countries’ data priorities alongside the Bank’s core lending portfolio.  He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations; a member of the Society for the Policy Sciences; a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science; and a member of the Council of Editors for the Journal of Law and Politics. He has published books, chapters, and refereed journal articles on topics including development data, law, and governance.

Ms Esperanza Magpantay is the Senior Statistician of the ICT Data and Analytics division of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), where she has been working since December 2000. She is responsible for the collection, harmonization and dissemination of ICT statistics.

Ms Magpantay coordinates the work of the ITU Expert Groups on ICT indicators, the ITU’s representative at the Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development and its Steering Committee, UN Inter-agency Expert Group on SDG Indicators and the UN Global Working Group on Big Data where she currently leads the Task Team on mobile phone big data. She has represented ITU in international meetings including the UN Statistical Commission and the UN Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities (CCSA), and in regional events giving presentations and trainings on ICT statistics. Before joining ITU, she worked for 7 years at the International Labour Office (ILO) in Geneva as a statistical officer. She has a degree in Statistics from the University of the Philippines and is a candidate in Master in Business Analytics and Big Data from IE University in Madrid, Spain.

Sveta Milusheva is a Senior Economist in the Development Impact (DIME) department at the World Bank. She co-leads the World Bank program on Mobile Phone Data (MPD) for Policy under the Global Data Facility, focused on helping low- and middle-income countries integrate MPD into their national data systems. She also leads the ieConnect program of impact evaluations focused on transport investments and within this program leads the work on urban mobility. Her research focuses on the application of new big data sources, such as mobile phone data and crowdsourced data, to study questions in development and to evaluate the impact of development interventions. This is applied to areas including infrastructure and information & communication technologies, population mobility, health and gender. She received her PhD and MA in Economics from Brown University and her BA in Economics and International Studies from Emory University.

Trevor Monroe is a Senior Program Officer with the Chief Statisticians Office in the Development Data Group at the World Bank. Trevor leads programs that put Data and AI to work for development. Currently, He currently manages a program under the Global Data Facility to accelerate country capacity to use Mobile Phone Data for policy and Official statistics.