March 26th, 2026. As part of the commemoration of International Women’s Day, the Community of Practice for the Measurement of the Care Society of the Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN-SCA) organized the virtual event “Building Colombia’s Care Map: Information Systems and Territorial Knowledge”. The meeting provided an opportunity to present and discuss Colombia’s experience in designing and implementing an innovative tool that integrates statistical and georeferenced information to strengthen public care policies with a territorial and intersectional approach at the national level.

The event was opened by Olga Barquero, Head of the Institutional Cooperation Unit at Chile’s National Institute of Statistics (INE), and Lucía Scuro, Senior Social Affairs Officer in ECLAC’s Division for Gender Affairs, who highlighted the importance of coordinated work between National Statistical Offices and Machineries for the Advancement of Women and emphasized that the map is the result of technical and political coordination between Colombia’s Ministry of Equality and Equity, the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), ECLAC, and UN Women Colombia.

Lucía Scuro noted that the region is facing a care crisis that disproportionately affects women due to the sexual division of labour, and that having tools to measure supply and demand in local communities is essential for designing comprehensive care systems that recognize social and cultural realities. She emphasized that this tool allows for the recognition of the diverse social and economic realities of the regions, contributing to regional mandates such as the Regional Gender Agenda and the Tlatelolco Commitment.

For her part, Carol Quintero, a consultant with the Ministry of Equality and Equity, presented the Colombia Care Map as a response to a long-standing lack of territorial data on public services in the country. The tool allows users to see where services are located, which populations they serve, and under what conditions, functioning as a public service that facilitates citizens’ access to information and guides local governments in planning investments.

To date, the data collection process has covered 72% of Colombia’s municipalities. Quintero revealed significant preliminary findings: 60% of the identified centres serve children, while only 3% of the services are specifically aimed at caregivers, highlighting the need to reorganize and redistribute services to close structural gaps.

The technical development of the map was detailed by Amparo Bravo and Paula Dabós, consultants with ECLAC’s Division for Gender Affairs, who explained that the information was collected via online forms and processed for visualization in open formats such as GeoJSON. Bravo explained that the process involved extensive coordination to collect data from municipal and provincial governments, followed by data cleaning and technical georeferencing. For her part, Dabós gave a live demonstration of the geo-visualizer, highlighting features such as population filters (children, older adults, people with disabilities) and the “route calculation” tool to help citizens locate nearby services.

One of the key innovations presented was the development of a “care center manager,” a platform that will allow municipalities to update their information directly using usernames and passwords, ensuring the sustainability and regularity of the data.

For her part, Diana Osorio, an advisor to the DANE General Directorate, detailed the integration of this tool into the DANE Geoportal. Osorio explained that the statistical office has served as a technical intermediary, ensuring quality and usability standards, and enabling the overlay of census data layers to enhance the analysis of regional disparities. The geo-viewer allows non-specialist users to navigate through layers of information, calculate routes to centres, and overlay census data for a contextualized analysis of territorial inequalities. Finally, she emphasized that future challenges focus on ensuring the sustainability and continuous updating of the data, as well as on developing official technical documentation that complies with the standards of the national statistical system to guarantee the traceability of the process.

The discussion featured remarks by Manuel Píriz, Director of Planning and Monitoring at Uruguay’s Ministry of Social Development, who emphasized that the main challenge for this type of tool is not technological, but rather one of interoperability and ongoing updates. Píriz noted that outdated information undermines the tool’s credibility with the public, making data collection mechanisms at the source critical.

Likewise, Diana Espinosa, Acting Deputy Director of UN Women Colombia, emphasized that the map enables a shift from recognizing care as a right to its effective implementation on the territories. She highlighted key lessons, such as the importance of investing in quality data for accountability and the use of the platform as a tool for social oversight by caregivers’ movements.

Finally, the discussion helped identify some future challenges, such as data collection in capital cities and densely populated areas due to the limited capacity of local officials; the incorporation of community care into the Map, which is a frequent demand from both conceptual and social perspectives; and the proposal for institutionalization through the formal integration of this information into the National Statistical Plan to ensure its long-term sustainability, funding, and traceability.

The event concluded with remarks by Karen García Rojas, Statistician at ECLAC’s Division for Gender Affairs, who emphasized that the map, as a tool for citizens and institutions, addresses a specific public policy need and highlighted its ability to provide an in-depth intersectional analysis; she also underscored the inter-institutional coordination involved in creating the database that feeds into the map. She stated that the next step is to move forward in strengthening technical and forward-looking capacities to address population aging and new care needs. In closing, she reaffirmed that the region’s efforts, under the Tlatelolco Commitment, must be directed toward adopting territorial approaches that promote statistical and georeferenced information to contribute to the design of public care policies and advance toward substantive equality and the Care Society.