The Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) was founded in August 1992 on the recommendation of the Pakistan National Conservation Strategy (NCS), also called Pakistan's Agenda 21. SDPI is an independent non-profit organization to serve as a source of expertise for policy analysis and development, policy intervention, and policy and program advisory services. SDPI is registered under the Societies Registration Act, XXI of 1860.
SDPI provides the global sustainable development community with representation from Pakistan as well as South Asia as a whole. The SDPI’s mission is to catalyse the transition towards sustainable development, defined as the enhancement of peace, social justice and well-being, within and across generations. SDPI’s vision is to be a center of excellence on sustainable development policy research, capacity development and advocacy in Pakistan.
Mandate
- Conduct policy advice, policy oriented research and advocacy from a broad multi-disciplinary perspective.
- Promote the implementation of policies, programs, laws and regulations based on sustainable development.
- Strengthen civil society and facilitate civil society-government interaction through collaboration with other organizations and activist networks.
- Disseminate research findings and public education through the media, conferences, seminars, lectures, publications and curricula development.
- Contribute to building up national research capacity and infrastructure.
The Institute's activities are designed to provide:
- Policy advice to government
- A forum for policy dialogue
- Support to in-house, visiting and external researchers
- Publications for research, public and private sector use
- A conduit for North South dialogue
- An environment for information dissemination and training
- A base for regional advocacy and networking
The research program at SDPI drives the three main activities of policy advice, advocacy and training.
Pakistan Data Portal (PDP) at SDPI, has been developed with the aim to create an environment of enhanced data and evidence usage in policy making besides spurring improvements in the data regime.
The PDP is an online tool to share and disseminate the publicly available data in Pakistan. The data is shared in a single place in a machine-readable and comparable format allowing users to browse as well as download files and merge the data to compare and contrast across regions and years. The PDP provides the data processed through the system of quality control.
Pakistan Data Portal (PDP) is one the advanced open data portals of world having 4 Star rating according to Open Data Portal rating. It has one of the most advanced Indicator Dictionary in the world with three steps of Indicator meta-data for more organized quality control of data attached to the indicator. PDP has rationally linked data features on the basis of an advanced Indicator Dictionary. It also allows user to dynamically query data and pool the information from all the datasets from all the years into single dataset. Users can then perform further analysis on the queried data. It also has additional features for data visualization and data analysis.
Priorities as a partner of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data
The Sustainable Development Policy Institute is committed to enhance evidence-based policymaking to improve the lives of citizens in Pakistan through the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Pakistan Data Portal (PDP) – an open data initiative – at SDPI aims to create an environment of enhanced data and evidence usage in policymaking besides spurring improvements in the data regime. The online data portal will facilitate the improvements in quality, accuracy, and timeliness of data, as well as enhance transparency. SDPI will support the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data to build an enabling environment for the data revolution for sustainable development in Pakistan.
The PDP, through Pakistan Data Forum (a data advisory group), will facilitate and build the capacity of stakeholders for the production and timely use of data to promote and track the progress on SDGs. SDPI also intends to engage with policymakers, statistical organizations, government departments, researchers, and media to harness the data revolution for designing, developing, financing, and implementing national and subnational policies and plans towards the attainment of the SDGs.
