27 February 2015: Representatives of national statistical offices (NSOs), policy makers, and experts from civil society and the private sector gathered to discuss the monitoring requirements for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and targets of the post-2015 development agenda from a national perspective, at a seminar organized by the UN Statistics Division (UNSD).

‘The development of an indicator framework for the post-2015 development agenda: Towards a nationally owned monitoring system for the SDGs’ took place on 27 February 2015, in New York, US. A summary of the discussions was submitted as an input to the 46th Session of the UN Statistical Commission (UNSC 46), which convened on 3-6 March 2015.

Seminar participants said national ownership is key for developing and implementing an effective monitoring framework for the SDGs, noting that the monitoring process must be country-led, politically backed and resourced, and integrated into the overall national development frameworks. According to the discussants, a country-owned indicator framework should be: based on an inclusive and participatory process with wide stakeholder engagement; comprehensive; linked to governance and reporting arrangements, and led and managed within existing government structures. They further agreed that the nationally owned monitoring system should rely on a strong conceptual framework, and build on existing frameworks, such as those developed by the Conference of European Statisticians, System of National Accounts, and System of Environmental-Economic Accounts.

Speakers also highlighted the need for: a solid information infrastructure that includes both statistical and geographic information systems; an application revolution in addition to a data revolution, to engage users; new technologies to improve data collection; access to data; and open data.

The seminar consisted of three panels on meeting the new monitoring requirements of the SDGs. At the first panel, Walter Radermacher, EUROSTAT, Marcela Ordoñez, Permanent Mission of Colombia, Ben Paul Mungyereza, Bureau of Statistics – Uganda, and Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, The New School, addressed the dynamics of the two-way relationship between politics and statistics. At the second panel, Enrique Ordaz, National Institute of Statistics and Geography – Mexico, and Ola Awad, Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, discussed how national statistical systems deal with challenges presented by the new monitoring requirements. Finally, Roberto Olinto Ramos, Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, Dominique Habimana, National Institute of Statistics – Rwanda, and Pietro Bertazzi, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), focused on utilizing traditional and innovative ways to meet the data demand for monitoring the SDGs. [IISD RS Sources] [Seminar Webpage] [IISD RS Story on Accountability Presentation] [Summary of Seminar]