21 November 2014: The UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) announced a needs assessment project for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) monitoring and capacity development. The assessment exercise seeks to: fill knowledge gaps; deliver preliminary cost estimates for administrative data, environmental statistics and economic and financial statistics; encourage new, reliable and accessible government data; provide governments with capacity to design better policies and programs; and enable citizens to review progress and improve decision-making.

The project is undertaken by SDSN in collaboration with other organizations including the World Bank, PARIS21, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UN Foundation, the ONE Campaign and the UN Secretary-General’s Independent Expert Advisory Group (IEAG) on a Data Revolution for Sustainable Development.

According to a briefing paper on the project, there is little consensus on the best way to estimate the costs of capacity requirements for the global statistical system. Existing estimates do not account for the accessibility, dissemination and use of the data, it finds. The paper proposes a typology of core development data, broad principles for their production, and methodological parameters for costing data production.

A draft report open for public consultation is expected to be published in January 2015. A final report will be issued in May 2015, in advance of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD). [Project Webpage] [Publication: A Needs Assessment for SDG Monitoring and Statistical Capacity Development: Developing a Typology to Assess the Cost]