10 March 2016: Responding to the proposed global indicators from the UN Inter-Agency and Expert Group on the Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDGs), civil society organizations have made suggestions in the areas of universal health coverage, inequality, and access to justice and rule of law. CSOs also have presented recommendations for the functioning of the IAEG-SDGs, and launched resources on data. The UN Statistical Commission’s (UNSC) 47th session is under way in New York, US, from 8-11 March 2016, and is expected to take action on the proposed set of global SDG indicators from the IAEG-SDGs.

On Goal 3 (Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages), Save the Children expresses concern about a proposed indicator for target 3.8 on universal health coverage, which suggests measuring the “number of people covered by health insurance or a public health system.” Explaining that “insurance is no assurance,” the article says measuring coverage does not address affordability or quality concerns, nor does it consider financial risk protection or measure potential impoverishment as a result of health spending by the poorest or most marginalized groups. Save the Children recommends that the IAEG-SDGs and the UN Statistical Commission (UNSC) return to the indicator originally proposed by the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO) on assessing the population protected from catastrophic/ impoverishing out-of-pocket health expenditure, emphasizing that this indicator will measure equity in access to health, and is based on the same surveys that will be used to measure SDG 1 on poverty.

On Goal 10 (Reduce inequality within and among countries), the proposed indicators are “woefully incomplete” because they do not address economic inequality and fail to consider how fiscal policies affect human rights, writes Kate Donald, Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR). The indicators for the SDG 10 targets focus on “the bottom end of the spectrum” without considering high earners and those in wealthy brackets. CESR recommends using the Palma ratio, noting that it is widely used and that a similar indicator was included in earlier IAEG-SDG proposals.

On Goal 16, the proposed indicators for access to justice and rule of law are not sufficient for countries to track progress on justice, nor do they address the ways in which people typically seek to resolve disputes, writes Peter Chapman, Open Society Justice Initiative, on Deliver 2030. Observing that both of the proposed indicators on access to justice focus on the criminal justice system, Chapman recommends the IAEG-SDGs add a third indicator on “proportion of those who have experienced a dispute in the past 12 months who have accessed a formal, informal, alternative or traditional dispute resolution mechanism and who feel the process was effective and just.” He argues that such an indicator would better capture the ways in which justice systems contribute to sustainable development, such as through promoting government accountability and addressing land disputes.

The Governance Data Alliance has produced a governance data dashboard that aggregates high-quality governance data, with the aim of advancing democratic governance reforms, and promoting greater coordination among data producers. The governance data tool allows users to select data by country and source and compare up to three countries. Available data includes: the Africa Integrity Indicators; the World Bank’s Citizen Engagement in Rulemaking and Doing Business-Distance to Frontier datasets; Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index; World Resources Institute’s (WRI) Environmental Democracy Index; Freedom House’s Freedom in the World, Freedom of the Press, and Freedom on the Net datasets; Global Financial Integrity’s Hot Money Narrow Outflows and Illicit Financial Flows; the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law and Open Government Index; the Open Government Partnership’s databases, and others.

An open letter from the Transparency, Accountability and Participation (TAP) Network calls on the IAEG-SDGs to build flexibility into its working methods, to ensure it can improve its proposed indicator set in the years ahead. TAP also highlights the need for the IAEG-SDGs to improve inclusion and genuine participation of civil society and other stakeholders, including during: the tiering of global indicators; the compilation of metadata; and the indicator review mechanism. The Network also notes its support for “non-official” or “third-party” data sources to support SDG measurement and monitoring at all levels, and it suggests the establishment of formal or informal multi-stakeholder monitoring groups, similar to the Praia Group on governance statistics. IAEG-SDGs’ third meeting will take place in Mexico City, Mexico, on 31 March-2 April 2016.

Also on data, Nick Corby of Leonard Cheshire Disability asks “How must we work differently in order to leave no one behind?” Corby suggests the world must move away from “comfortable routines” by: replacing thematic silos with greater coordination; moving away from single-institution data sets towards comparable, quality data and common indicators; and drawing inspiration from UNAIDS’ Three Ones concept of one national plan, one coordinating authority and one country level monitoring and evaluation structure. [CESR Article] [Save the Children Blog] [OSF Blog] [Governance Data Alliance Website] [TAP Network Letter] [Corby Blog] [IISD RS Coverage of UNSD 47]