IDinsight welcomes Sarah Lucas as Global Lead for the Data on Demand initiative

April 11, 2022 – IDinsight announces today the appointment of its new director, Sarah Lucas, who will oversee the organization’s Data on Demand (DoD) initiative, created to produce timely, high-quality data-driven insights for public sector decision-makers. Sarah will work with the DoD team to expand its capabilities and reach. Building on systems developed over the last four years to generate rapid-turnaround, representative survey data in India, DoD is now expanding to the Philippines and several African countries. 

The DoD initiative offers pathways to substantial social impact, as it enables both governments and NGOs to get rapid-turnaround, high-quality, and representative data to answer critical questions that inform policies and programs with significant impacts on economic and social well-being. DoD is a nimble initiative, well suited for both routine uses in major government programs and for rapid-turnaround decision-making on unanticipated issues. For example, DoD is already being integrated with administrative data to track socio-economic outcomes in 27 Indian districts, soon expanding to 112 districts. At the same time, during the first wave of COVID-19, DoD conducted seven rapid phone survey rounds to inform the Government of India’s response strategy. The time from request to results delivery for the first round was just 13 days and was representative of 80 million of India’s residents living in poverty. 

Sarah is joining IDinsight at a time of growth for the DoD team, as it works to build on successes in India to expand globally and increase access to fast, reliable, high-quality data for policymakers in South East Asia and Africa.

Sarah brings to IDinsight more than 20 years of experience supporting government partners to bolster their use of data and evidence to improve decisions and people’s lives. Most recently, Sarah served as Program Officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation where she oversaw a strategy and $180 million grant portfolio to advance evidence-informed and data-driven policymaking in Africa. Sarah previously worked at the U.S. government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), an agency designed to integrate data and evidence into all major policy and program decisions. At MCC Sarah served as the country team lead for Liberia and as a senior policy adviser representing the agency in government-wide initiatives to advance the President’s global development policy. She also worked at the Center for Global Development where she led a strategy to make the center’s research influential for legislative and executive branch policymakers and advocacy groups. 

“I’m delighted to welcome Sarah Lucas to IDinsight as we intensify our focus on bringing the highest quality and most timely data to bear on consequential decisions by government and NGO leaders,” said IDinsight CEO Ruth Levine. “Sarah is an unparalleled leader in the field. She brings not only broad experience, but also a compelling vision for improving public policies and development programs with data and evidence.” 

“After eight years of supporting the evidence-informed policymaking field, I can see clearly that IDinsight excels at everything that matters for impact – a relentless commitment to evidence use, not just production; a focus on informing real-time policy decisions; and ability to build trusting partnerships and institutionalize the use of data and evidence within public sector agencies,” said Sarah Lucas, incoming IDinsight Data on Demand Global Lead. “The DoD team is taking these principles to an ambitious new level and I am absolutely delighted to be joining this dynamic global team.”