World Development Report 2021: Data for Better Lives

The unprecedented growth of data and its ubiquity in our daily lives signal that the digital revolution is transforming the world. But much of the value of data remains untapped, waiting to be realized. Data collected for one particular purpose has the potential to generate economic value in applications far beyond those originally anticipated. However, many barriers stand in the way of the beneficial reuse of data, ranging from misaligned incentives and incompatible data systems to a funda...