The Inclusive Data Charter, launched during the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, seeks to improve the quality, quantity, availability, and financing of disaggregated data to ensure that no one is left behind.
It features five principles on data' inclusion, disaggregation, collection and analysis.
During the launch event, ten founding champions described efforts their organizations or governments are taking to integrate the Charter’s principles into their work.
17 July 2018: The Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD) launched an Inclusive Data Charter in the margins of the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF). The Charter’s goals include improving the quality, quantity, availability, and financing of disaggregated data to ensure that no one is left behind as society endeavors to achieve the SDGs.
The Charter is based on a vision set by the SDGs, the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). It highlights the lack of reliable, adequate data and the skills needed to analyze them, which are prerequisites to living up to the SDGs’ ambition of leaving no one behind. It features five principles that provide a framework for signatories to follow when implementing their own projects and initiatives:
As a multi-stakeholder mechanism led by a core group of governments, international organizations and civil society organizations, the Charter is led by a group of ten “founding champions.” During the launch event, the founding champions showcased action plans that contribute to these principles and the overarching aims of the Charter, including examples described below.
UNICEF aims to increase work on data that simplifies data communication, is fit-for-purpose in all contexts, and builds common platforms.
At national level, Ghana has internalized the Charter via an action plan that seeks to strengthen the country’s administrative data systems such that they can collect and analyze more granular, timely data, thereby building the nation’s monitoring abilities in the context of the SDGs. Ghana’s Minister for Planning, George Gyan-Baffour, described during the launch event how initiatives such as the establishment of a National Identification System and a Population Register will also contribute to the aims of the Charter.
In the UN system, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) commits to drive intelligent demand for an integration of data, as well as exploit cross-sectoral data to break traditional silos. UNICEF’s action plan notes that it will stop work that does not meet quality standards, encourages a piecemeal approach and the proliferation of pilot projects, or is disconnected from practical use. Further, it commits to reduce the collection of redundant data or analytical work on issues that are already well covered by other organizations. UNICEF aims to increase work on data that simplifies data communication, is fit-for-purpose in all contexts, and builds common platforms, among other initiatives.
As an independent international organization, Development Initiatives (DI) features an action plan that lays out objectives on the supply and use of disaggregated data in partnership with other organizations. It describes actions for each objective, including data audits at the subnational level and identification of partners who work with groups that are excluded from official statistics. The action plan also notes who within Development Initiatives is responsible for leading, the timeframe for implementation, and the principles to which the objective and actions most closely map.
The Charter remains open to additional signatories. [Inclusive Data Charter Homepage] [Inclusive Data Charter Vision and Principles] [GPSDD News Release on Ten Governments and Organizations Announcing Commitments to Inclusive, Representative Data] [Inclusive Data Charter Launch Event Page] [Keynote Speech by George Gyan-Baffour, Ghana’s Minister for Planning]