The developed world gives special attention to data that is both relevant and correct and recognizes it as a most important element in any project or scheme. Good data is the basis upon which decision-makers, governments and executive bodies build and progress.
I remember a firm that was hired by a manufacturing company to make a study. I was a member of the team making the study and I was involved in collecting and evaluating appropriate data. The company was understandably keen to know the volume of the annual imports of the commodity which they wanted to manufacture locally. To my amazement, the reactions of the company’s executives was unbelievable. I saw that they believed the data we had supplied was incorrect. In fact, they had figures that reflected the commodity imports were double what we had reported. In other words, the foreign organizations from whom the data had come were more aware of the quantity of our imports than we were. In other words, the data we had supplied was completely wrong. Is it surprising that the company finally decided not to go ahead with the manufacturing project? Jobs were lost and our economy was poorer and all because of incorrect data. Our problem as far as data is concerned is that we still have those who live in the past and don’t want to change or catch up with recent developments.
Is it logic that researchers go to scientific institutions to obtain relevant data and are told that the data requested is confidential? And then the next day, the very data is available on the Internet or in a newspaper!
Confidentiality may still exist — and indeed should exist in certain cases — even in the Internet age and the day of rapid communications. At the same time, let us move into a time of speed and transparency and leave behind the old ways and traditions of stagnation and bureaucracy.