The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has updated its open digital discovery tool, SDG Pathfinder, to include data visualizations on OECD country progress towards reaching the Goals. The tool provides quick access to SDG-related content by applying an SDG lens to policy content from six international organizations.

SDG Pathfinder covers analytical content from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Nordic Co-operation, OECD, The Commonwealth, the UN, and the World Trade Organization (WTO), published from 2010 onwards. The tool includes:

• 17 thematic views, one per SDG, which show the topics behind each Goal;
• topical views, based on an index of about 40 key topics and about 200 related, peripheral topics, which show the SDGs associated with a specific topic; and
• a cross-cutting view, represented as a map of core and peripheral topics pertaining to the SDGs that highlights the conceptual linkages among the Goals.

As an illustration, clicking on SDG 1 (no poverty) under thematic views takes the user to a page containing a visual representation of country progress on the Goal for each OECD member State. The page offers a list of SDG 1-related publications that can be filtered by topic, country, and source organization.

Typing “child poverty” in the search box to access the tool’s topical view brings up a list of relevant publications, which identifies the common SDG (Goal 1) and can be refined according to source or country.

Clicking on a core topic of healthcare in the cross-cutting view reveals linkages among SDGs 3 (good health and well-being) and 1, and highlights the number of relevant documents, including as a percentage of all available documents.  

The tool covers some 7,000 documents, including books, chapters, articles, papers, and other forms of curated analysis, extracted using artificial intelligence (AI) based on advanced machine-learning technologies and Natural Language Processing.

SDG Pathfinder also includes a dedicated COVID-19 webpage housing a collection of data and reports on topics relating to various policy tools and their effectiveness in fighting pandemics, strengthening health systems, and mitigating the negative economic spillovers. The resources share examples of effective and innovative employment, educational, economic, governance, and health and social policy responses. [SDG Pathfinder]