On may 28, we invited our international colleagues to an exciting finale to our international webinar series this semester.

The final event in the Policy Futures series of distinguished speakers featured keynote Gita Steiner-Khamsi (Teachers College Columbia University) and two discussants Christopher Lubienski (Indiana University) and Antoni Verger (Autonomous University of Barcelona).

Gita gave an intriguing presentation on the ‘surplus of data’ in a comparative policy perspective: What does the surplus of data do to policy making? We live in an era in which evidence-based policy and monitoring are expected to be the norm rather than the exception. Even though the initiatives to develop global databanks date back to the mid-1990s the development of global public goods such as openly accessible international toolkits, documents, studies and databanks in education has only begun to proliferate over the past ten years or so. Steiner-Khamsi provided an insightful analysis of these conditions following two different analytical research avenues: 1)how the surplus of data translates into a “surplus of evidence” and 2) how the surplus of data has transformed policy making.

Lubienski and Verger responded to the presentation and shared valuable thoughts and insights on how to understand an analyze the surplus of data.