"As citizens of this country, it is indispensable for us to interact with data so that we are be able to track the progress of Nepal."
Durga Subedi is a university level student, who is pursuing a Master’s degree in Health Science from Mahendra Ratna Campus. As part of her studies, Durga has been actively using the Nepal in Data portal and promotes the use of the portal among other students.
Why are you interested in data and statistics?
Data and statistics are needed for thesis and research purposes, so that is why I am interested.As a health science student, I have to use data every day to prepare reports and for my research.
What role do data and statistics play in your study?
Data and statistics plays an important role in my study. Studying medical science theory, requires me to be familiar with data and statistics. In addition, if we mention actual data in our exams, it increases our chances of getting a good mark. Even for the public service commission level exams, it is critical to have a sound concept of what data is and to be able to understand data.
What are the biggest challenges in searching for data as a student?
While searching for data for our research work, students still face issues in getting data because it is difficult to find websites that have authentic data. Many websites with data are not well structured, making them difficult to navigate. Students also get confused if a website is authorised and whether the data it contains is official data or not. Even if we manage to get data, students still face problems in citing data accurately.
How has the Nepal in Data portal helped you as a student?
Nepal in Data is a very useful portal. Being a student, I constantly need to access data, so I often visit the portal. Even today, while visiting the portal, I was going across the indicators of number of nurses in Nepal, which I can actually use in my studies. The part I appreciate the most about the portal is that it is very user friendly, because everything has been organized under one single tab. Therefore, it is easy to go through desired sections, navigate and filter the data.
How can we move to a data culture in Nepal and among students in particular?
As a citizen of this country, it is indispensable for us to interact with data so that we are be able to track the progress of Nepal. Hence, I think it is very important that there should be mass awareness about the existence of a portal like Nepal in Data and students in particular should be aware of it. Another important aspect is that Nepal in Data should be made available offline as not everyone has access to the internet. In addition, it would very helpful if in the future, Nepal in Data could be developed into a mobile friendly application, so that it can reach an even larger group of users. Finally, it would be really progressive if data can be real time or update on a daily basis, so that we can track changes more frequently as now it takes a lot of time until a dataset is updated. For instance, if we were to have real time Child Mortality data, the data would enable us to trace the current situation as well as the past situation and would allow us to propose specific preventive measures for the government to implement.
