SPECIAL FEATURE
“Whether you’re looking at health, or poverty or climate change, the problems are
enormous. But I wouldn’t work in development if I wasn’t
positive about the future.”
Jessica Espey
hammer out something positive for the planet. Some country experts make it clear that UN requests for data in specific areas are too burdensome for their national systems; others talk of trying to streamline the indicator framework; others still explain how difficult it is to disaggregate their data. Issues overlap and each country has its own focus and challenges. At times it seems an insurmountable challenge, but still the Statistical Commission plows on, and most, if not all, delegations acknowledge the progress that has been made so far. The Commission, in particular, supports the implementation of the Federated Information System of national and global data hubs for the SDGs to facilitate integration of different data sources, promote data interoperability and foster
collaboration among partners from different stakeholder groups at national level. It also prepared for the upcoming 2020 review of the SDG indicators framework by endorsing guiding principles, criteria and a timeline for the review. An event at the beginning of the week-long meeting provided an opportunity for the statistical community to engage in a dialogue with the political level – ambassadors leading the intergovernmental process on financing for development. As is the case with most things in the world of development, a financing gap is a recurring theme; in this case for supporting national statistical systems. Many low- capacity countries simply don’t have the money to improve things.
Espey recounts her attendance at a recent presentation made by lead statisticians from the Democratic Republic of Congo. “They are trying to prepare for a new census – their first since their sole previous exercise in 1984,” she says. “They are only US$200,000 short for some of the surveys, but they simply don’t have the extra money to spend on data.” Perhaps surprisingly to those not in the data trade, censuses still form the backbone of a country’s statistics framework. According to the United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA), a census is among the most complex and massive peacetime exercises a nation undertakes. A traditional population and housing census requires mapping an entire country, deciding what technologies should be used, mobilizing and training enumerators, conducting a major public awareness campaign, canvassing all households, compiling hundreds of thousands – or millions – of questionnaires, monitoring procedures and results, and analyzing, using and disseminating the results.
3 The United Nations Statistics Division in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs carried out such an assessment as part of a pilot project in six countries—three in Africa and three in Asia. It revealed that, on average, data for only 40 of the applicable global SDG indicators (20 percent) are currently available; another 47 global indicators (23 percent) are considered easily feasible.
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PHOTO: OFID/Steve Hughes
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