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Major updates to ‘reservoir of inspiration’ Pacific Data Hub
The Pacific Data Hub, an online gateway to comprehensive data and information ‘about the Pacific, by the Pacific’, has been recently updated—with more improvements in the pipeline.
The Pacific Community (SPC) has updated the Pacific Data Hub (pacificdata.org)—a single entry point to Pacific datasets, publications, dashboards and other tools—with new topic categories and pages, while further usability improvements are also underway.
A Pacific-led community good, the SPC-coordinated platform serves as a portal to data across the new categories of agriculture and forestry; climate change, disasters and risks; economic matters; education; energy; the environment; fisheries and aquaculture; food; gender; health; information, communication and technology; ocean and maritime issues; population; and culture and society.
Mr Sioeli Tonga, Programme Manager for the Pacific Data Hub, says that this new topic categorisation aligns with themes especially relevant to the Pacific region as well as SPC’s flagship areas like climate change and gender.
Additionally, there is an increased emphasis on population data—the most frequently searched topic on the Pacific Data Hub.
Supporting evidence-based decision-making by governments, partners, academia and research organisations plus the private sector is a key part of SPC’s work in sustainable development, with the Pacific Data Hub an integrated programme that sits across SPC’s nine work areas.
SPC’s divisions, together with the national statistics offices of SPC’s member countries and territories, as well as other producers of public data, all contribute to populating the Data Hub for the benefit of evidence-informed research, policy and planning in the Pacific.
“The Pacific Data Hub is built on the strengths, knowledge and wisdom of the Pacific, and we continue to iterate, learn and develop, based on the feedback and ideas flowing from our users,” says Mr Tonga.
“As custodians of Pacific data, we provide both data users and producers with a safe, secure and robust platform that protects the integrity of their data, while enabling access to information that empowers decision-making supported by data and evidence.”
While datasets on the Pacific Data Hub have been re-indexed to align with the new topic categories as closely as possible, work continues with further updates planned on tagging and metadata methodology. The team is working with data producers in continuing to refine the Pacific Data Hub’s data catalogue.
Future plans include redesigning the Pacific Data Hub’s front page and navigation, including further enhancements to topic pages to serve as starting points for users. This will improve access to Pacific data, dashboards, topic-specific applications, and related external resources.
The Pacific Data Hub is also one of two repositories of data for the 2024 Pacific Dataviz Challenge, along with the Government of New Caledonia’s open data portal.
Another SPC collab, the Pacific Dataviz Challenge is an opportunity for participants worldwide, of any age, skillset or background, to demonstrate their talent in transforming open data—like that found on the Pacific Data Hub—into impactful insights through data visualisation.
Contacts
Ben Campion, Communications and Engagement Adviser, Statistics for Development | [email protected]
