Find the links to the strategy in English, Spanish and French at the bottom of the blog. The strategy will be open for public consultation until August 9 2023 - please note that the public consultation is now closed.
I am excited to introduce you all to the Global Partnership’s new organizational Strategy. As a network, our priorities and plans need to reflect the needs and interests of our partners, so we need to hear what you think.
Some of you will already have contributed through town halls, roundtable discussions, and many, many calls over the last year, and for that I’m continually grateful.
We are at a pivot point
This year is the halfway point to the Sustainable Development Goals, and attention will be focused on how to accelerate progress towards 2030. We are confronted daily with the realities of a world that is off track. This is true both in terms of progress - as, for example, carbon emissions continue to rise, and in terms of the data we need to measure it—only one in five countries have data to monitor SDG 13 on Climate Action. The Global Partnership exists because of organizations who believe that information and data have an important part to play in making the world a better place. Our strategy is an opportunity to reflect on what’s gone well, what we’ve learned, and, crucially, how we can scale up our efforts and our impact to confront the many challenges we face before it is too late.
The landscape of data is very different to when we started work on the first five year strategy for the Global Partnership. While many of the existing challenges remain, new technologies have shifted the debates. AI and digital transformation systems are built on data, and raise the stakes both in terms of the opportunity and the risks involved in the management of data to deliver the changes we want and need.
A vision for positive, collective progress
Our network is powerful—our work together can and does influence the trajectories of countries and global debates. Over the last five years our work together has strengthened systems, changed policies and shifted debates. We want to build on our successes. Our strategy is a route map to using our collective power well, with a focus on maximising the potential of data but being clear eyed about the risks.
In writing it, we’ve been thinking about how to make sure we make the right connections between the different communities that are part of the Global Partnership—statistics offices, the private sector, civil society groups and academia—and how to enable these to play their best part in building the world we want. We want to make sure that the Global Partnership adds value to the sector, and to the work of our individual network members. I hope you all see something in there that resonates with you and the strategies of your organization, and that it looks useful to you as a framework for collaboration and change.
We want your comments
Please note that the public consultation is now closed and comments can no longer be submitted.
Today we are making the strategy publically available. Hearing from our network partners is a vital stage in its development. Please share your thoughts directly in the document, or, if you prefer, send an email to info@data4sdgs.org with your thoughts.
We will be taking comments on the strategy until 9 August, 2023. Thank you for taking the time to read and share your feedback on it. We will look at all comments and will address them in the next draft. After the final set of revisions, the strategy will be signed off by our Board and launched at the Festival de Datos in Uruguay in November. I hope to see you all there!