allocating resources and monitoring and evaluating social programs. Through this Directive, the index has been used to modify the allocation of resources, which helped accelerate poverty reduction during austerity without an increase in the budget (Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network 2017). To effectively use indices like the Multidimensional Poverty Index as a management tool, it is vital that it is updated frequently and that the index use data sources that can be disaggregated to the level at which the budget is allocated (see, also, discussion of granularity). This allows the index to become a tool to inform policy decisions to reduce poverty and deprivation, and not just an occasional point of information.

Similarly, indices like Subnational Doing Business – an index created by the World Bank that measures business regulations at the subnational level -- can be used to track performance if they are reported frequently. The Subnational Doing Business in Nigeria series includes four rounds of studies analyzing business regulations and their implementation across all 36 states and the capital in 2008, 2010, 2014 and most recently 2018. This has inspired several reforms and improved the overall business climate in the country. Authorities in the state of Kaduna, for example, set in motion several reform initiatives after being ranked among one of the last states in 2014 in the area of registering property. The state responded by restructuring and digitizing the land registry, replacing percentage-based registration fees with flat fees, and making the issuance of the governor’s consent—previously the biggest bottleneck in the process—much more efficient. This overhaul resulted in one of the most significant improvements recorded in the Doing Business in Nigeria series since 2008. It made one-third of procedural requirements redundant, reduced the time to register property by more than two months and cut the cost by almost one-third (World Bank 2018d).

# **Timeliness**

When data are timely, they can lead to better emergency response when disasters hit, whether environmental, financial, health, or conflict related. For example, weather data, especially weather forecasts, can help people anticipate and prepare for extreme events. The value of such data can be illustrated by two intense cyclones in the Bay of Bengal that occurred 14 years apart. The 1999 cyclone caught the Indian state of Odisha by surprise, causing massive devastation, killing more than 10,000 people, and destroying housing and public infrastructure. Since then, the Odisha State Disaster Management Authority and the government of Odisha have invested in weather forecast data and disaster response measures. When another cyclone hit in 2013, nearly 1 million people were evacuated to cyclone shelters, safe houses, and inland locations, and only 38 people died during and immediately after the storm (Hallegatte et al. 2017). These impressive results would not have possible without the weather data that gave sufficient advance warning of the cyclone.

Mobile technologies have the potential to speed up emergency response. In Uganda, an SMS-based health reporting program that provides real-time health data to beneficiaries, health professionals, and the Ministry of Health was able to halve response time to disease outbreaks.

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