And the World Bank Group, and the UN Population Division
of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs also participated.
Together they formed a database called the CME Info, which is a leading source for
information about child mortality for both governmental and non-governmental actors.
Another group that could carry a similar function is Sustainable Energy for
All Initiative,
which has announced a global tracking framework run by a multi-agency team to
monitor the progress of three main initiatives of sustainable energy for all.
First, universal access to modern energy services.
Second, double global rate of improvement of energy efficiency.
Last but not least, double the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.
The World Bank's Energy Sector Management and
the International Energy Agency worked with 13 other agencies,
varying from research institutes, NGOs and UN agencies.
To name a few, Practical Action UNDP, UNEP, WHO, World Energy Council,
UNIDO and IRENA collaborated to not only collect data on access to electricity,
but also about how source access to clean cooking, energy intensities of different
sectors of the economy and different sources of final energy consumption.
In some cases, universities are playing a leading role in thematic monitoring,
such as the Institute for Health Metrics and
Evaluation at the University of Washington, which has become a leading and
internationally trusted resource on key public health data.
Another university that launched the database with the help of WHO and
the Belgium government was the School of Public Health of Université Catholique de
Louvain, which maintains the EM-DAT database on natural disasters and
technological disasters.
Since research is one of the many functions that universities deliver,
we can expect to more universities to play an important role
to close in on the data gaps for SDG indicators.
Similarly, NGOs like Transparency International are playing an important
role in collecting and
vetting critical data that require sustained interest about a specific issue.
Transparency International collects data about perceptions of corruption from
more than 10 institutions, such as the African Development Bank and
Freedom House, that rank multiple countries on the same scale.
Using these different data sources on business people opinion surveys or
performance assessments, transparency international constraints,
the corruption perceptions index to provide
information about the level of corruption in each country.
In other cases,
businesses may have access to data that can underpin thematic esteemed monitoring.
For example, data from company supply chains can help track food loss and waste.
And ICT companies can share data on the use of
modern communication technologies across the world.
Since there are so
many stakeholders that can contribute to collecting data on the progress of SDGs,
you may be wondering, who is going to be in charge of organizing all this data?
The United Nations Statistical Commission created the interagency and
expert group on SDG indicators to develop and implement the global indicator
framework for the SDGs and targets of the 2030 agenda.
Indicators have been categorized into three groups.
Tier one indicator is conceptually clear,
had an internationally established methodology and standards are available.
And data are regularly produced by countries for at least 50% of countries
and all the population in every region where the indicator is relevant.
Tier two group is when the indicator is conceptually clear,
has an internationally established methodology and
standards are available, but data are not regularly produced via countries.
Tier three is no internationally established methodology or
standards are yet available for the indicator.
But methodology and standards are being or will be developed or tested.
One point you may have noticed is the importance of collecting the appropriate
data for the SDGs.
While national statistical offices are responsible for collecting data, they
may have limited capacity to collect data about marginalized groups, specifically
about how they have been marginalized and what their needs and priorities are.
In such cases, household surveys may need to be extended so
that not only the heads of households are interviewed.
But also other members of the household are interviewed as well.
If you are interested in education outcomes, conducting a survey at schools
may give us an incomplete picture about the status of education in the country.
We would have missed information about students not attending schools.
In that case, we would need to compliment enrollment data with other administrative
data available and helpful surveys to gain a fuller picture
to understand the extent of learning inequalities.
Since we're living in the age of the theatre revolution,
another great way to ensure leaving no one behind in monitoring SDGs is to
integrate data from multiple sources, such as just spacial information,
cell phone records, social media and other citizens innervated data.
National averages and
even city averages can hide wide disparities among population groups.
If national datasets can be complemented with these other sources of data,
we may be able to ensure the needs and the progress of vulnerable groups.
There's still much room for improvement to foster innovation and
engagement to strengthen data collection and dissemination for
monitoring progress of SDGs.
If you set good standards and promote best practices in data collection, then big
data can help us to understand how much we have come since the enactment of SDGs
and where we need to be headed whether at the local level or the global level.