The UN Statistical Commission's Friends of the Chair Group on Broader Measures of Progress (FOC) has provided several updates on its work, including support to the Open Working Group (OWG) on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a workshop on monitoring the post-2015 development agenda.
3 July 2014: The UN Statistical Commission’s Friends of the Chair Group on Broader Measures of Progress (FOC) has provided several updates on its work, including support to the Open Working Group (OWG) on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a workshop on monitoring the post-2015 development agenda.
Widely available data exist for the majority of the proposed SDG targets, according to an initial assessment conducted by the FOC. In a letter to the OWG Co-Chairs, the FOC Co-Chairs describe their work on matching selected indicator sets with the targets contained in the OWG Zero Draft. The FOC evaluated three indicator sets: the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); the Sustainable Development Indicators of the Conference of European Statisticians (CES SDI); and the SDGs proposed by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).
Out of the 166 targets identified in the OWG Zero Draft (excluding targets under Means of Implementation), 105 have indicators from at least one of the three indicator sets that could potentially be used in measurement. Out of these 105 targets that have indicators, data are widely available and currently produced for 59 targets. More efforts are required to measure indicators widely for 17 targets, while only some countries have data for 29 of the targets.
A complete assessment of the indicators is available in an Excel sheet published on the FOC website, including a list of targets that have ‘A’ indicators, which are considered feasible to measure. The website also contains updates on the FOC’s role in answering technical questions on proposed indicators during the OWG meetings. The FOC recommends retaining the Zero Draft’s two general targets on statistical capacity building.
The website also provides an update on a workshop on a monitoring framework for the post-2015 development agenda organized by the UN Statistics Division, the FOC and SDSN, which took place during June 2014, in New York, US. Participants discussed data gaps, annual reporting and survey instruments. SDSN is expected to publish an outcome document from the meeting. [FOC Website] [Information on Activities of the FOC] [FOC Update on OWGs] [FOC Update on Workshop]