The Gross National Happiness Commission launched Dashboard to Enhance Wellbeing of All, DEWA. The online statistical dashboard, according to the commission, would assist individuals to obtain accurate, reliable, and timely data for decision-making, planning, and program implementation in the country.
Individuals will no longer have to move between various agencies with the creation of such a platform. The DEWA dashboard will provide an integrated platform for tracking Gross National Happiness, Sustainable Development Goals, and country development plans.
The dashboard’s datasets include the percentage of the population living below the national poverty line, the percentage of the population with access to electricity, students’ success in the Bhutan Civil Service Exam, and the National Happiness Index among others.
“In the past, one of the issues that we constantly hear about is, lack of reliable data, availability of data, so with this system in place, we are hopeful that this will, to a large extend, solve issue of availability of data and timeliness of data. In the past we used to wait for the reports being generated by the different sectors. With this system in place, we will be updating the system periodically, like some on annual basis and some monthly and weekly basis to update the system so that we get information faster compared to the past,” said Phurba, Sr. Planning Officer with the GNHC.
He added, DEWA would also play a key role in enhancing data accessible for people who make essential decisions on a regular basis.
DEWA was created by the GNHC in partnership with the National Statistics Bureau and with United Nations Development Programmes financing.
Pema Seldon Tshering
