The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic, have underscored the importance of accurate, inclusive, and timely data to inform decision-making. Such data is critical to addressing key sustainable development challenges and policy issues across a range of economic, social, and environmental dimensions, including how to reach the most vulnerable groups and hard-to-count populations.
The pandemic has further highlighted the need for reliable, timely, and disaggregated data to supplement traditional data sources for effective policies to address and mitigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the importance of alternative data collection tools and methods.
This calls for innovative approaches to respond to the urgent data needs for local and national policy and decision-making for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and to address other key national development priorities. For this purpose, building agile and resilient data systems, and well-functioning national statistical systems is key.
Global and local partners, including the civil society, academia, and the private sector, under the Data For Now initiative, are working with national statistical offices, to develop countries’ capacities to use different sources of data, traditional and non-traditional, with application of advanced methodologies to transform and produce data to inform decision-making.
This session will bring together speakers working through the Data For Now initiative, including representatives from national statistical offices (NSOs), the private sector, and civil society to:
- Demonstrate practical examples on the use of innovative approaches that provide new insights and improve decision making at the national level.
- Share practical experience in implementing innovative methods and technologies to fill data gaps.
- Discuss challenges and lessons learned in implementing such approaches and offer recommendations/insights for other NSOs who are interested in using these methods to address their own challenges.
Organiser(s): United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD-DESA); Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD); Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN); World Bank (WB).
Speakers: Francesca Perucci; Grant Cameron; Mamadou Diallo; Mohammad Khalaf; Randi Johannessen; To be confirmed
