Large volumes of complex and variable data, often called big data, promise to help improve government service delivery, complement official statistics, and facilitate development in sectors such as health, urban development, transportation, and humanitarian response. This project will develop a research agenda and platform to expand the global discussion of big data for development (BD4D).Interest in capturing and analyzing large data sets for public purposes, known as BD4D, is still relatively new. It peaked when the post-2015 development agenda called for a data revolution to draw on existing and new sources of data to monitor progress on the UN's new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).Big data sets, such as purchase transaction or mobile usage data, are not new. However, until recently, limitations on computer memory, retrieval, and processing meant that only institutions like the U.S. National Security Agency and American Express could afford the supercomputers required to analyze huge volumes of information. Declining prices and improved functionality for hardware and memory have democratized data usage, while open source tools such as Hadoop have broadened the mechanisms for people to conduct big data analytics outside of proprietary and expensive software packages.Interest in BD4D has produced a tremendous demand for computer scientists and statisticians who can understand and analyze large data sets. With a few exceptions, the ability to conceptualize and analyze BD4D in the developing world is extremely limited. The lack of big data scientists in developing economies has meant that much of the research comes from institutions such as the UN, World Bank, universities, and the private sector. The issues deemed significant to the debate tend to be driven by interests outside of developing countries. There are limited avenues for developing-country data scientists, policy entrepreneurs, policymakers, lawyers, and economists to interact.This project will help develop an agenda to investigate the potential role of big data in supporting the 17 SDGs and 169 targets. The project will also map stakeholders in developing regions of the world and report on how to facilitate a research and policy agenda on big data for development. Their engagement is crucial for reducing the potentially harmful effects of big data, especially in the context of the data revolution.