Data for ALL at 48th UN statistical commission

In a side event of the 48th UN Statistical Commission, Community Systems Foundation and the UN Statistical Division informed national delegations, UN agencies and partners of plans to build an open source, open data platform of tools for monitoring the SDGs.  During the session, national delegates from Lao PDR, Serbia and Rwanda shared perspectives from their experiences in monitoring the MDGs, while looking forward to the challenges and opportunities of SDG monitoring.  The delegate from Rwanda noted that with expanded requirements to monitoring progress towards 17 SDG goals, it is critical to leverage technologies to support the National Statistics Office.  Central to this is a data warehouse that brings together data from various sectoral information systems to calculate indicators from different data suppliers.

Kris Oswalt, CSF President, while presenting the Data For All Initiative, suggested that in an era of limited resources and shared challenges, there is a need and demand for a platform for open-source, standards-based tools, built in modular form and through partnerships and collaboration, to support SDG monitoring.  Open data and open source solutions empower national statistical offices and support a sustained approach to monitoring the SDGs.  Capacity development is required to ensure institutional settings and human resources are in place to lead the national processes.  

Global leadership, technical collaboration and resource mobilization are urgently required to ensure that tools are in place to support SDG monitoring.  CSF informed the participants of the Data For All Initiative, positioned as a platform to manage reliable and timely data for ​programme planning, service delivery, transparency, and accountability.  Contributions to the platform are welcome.   National delegations were welcome to explore the tools and inquire to learn more at http://info.dataforall.org.