Paper short abstract:

The use of administrative data from health systems has changed. There is a transition from administrative extractivism linked to the control of workers, to scientific extractivism, linked to the valorization of this data. How do we characterize these phenomenons, and what to do to mitigate them?

Paper long abstract:

There has been an evolution in the production and use of administrative data from health systems in developing countries. Authors have described how colonial administrative data was aimed at controlling local populations rather than producing relevant knowledge. This practice was in some sense transmitted in Monitoring and Evaluation practices of the Global Health community, where the burden of reporting is often more linked to controlling health workers rather than to producing relevant knowledge.

With the emergence of new data collection and computing practices and capabilities, there is renewed interest in analyzing administrative data for public health and epidemiology purposes. Meanwhile actors with interest and resources for this type of usage are mainly academic actors from the North. As a result, recognition for data collection work rarely go to data producers, and the benefits of the results for the communities from which the data originate is often unclear.

As an actor specialized in strengthening health information systems in developing countries, Bluesquare needs to tackle both forms of extractivism: designing data collection schemes that benefit local systems, and ensure that the value of analyzed or transformed data benefits local communities. This paper will describe the forms taken by administrative and scientific extractivism in Health Information Systems as they are perceived by an actor of these systems, and will discuss the technical solutions, daily practices and processes put in place to tackle these challenges. Finally, it will underline open questions in the current state of our reflexions on the subject.