Seven Years into SDG Implementation, What Should Be Next for the Data for Development Agenda?
By Grant Cameron
Photo by Shuttershock
At the halfway mark to 2030, there remains a great deal of attention and effort to improve the data and methods underlying the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicator framework. Thanks to the work of the United Nations Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG-SDG), countries have adopted a common monitoring framework of 231 indicators, for which 219 have data as of October 2022. As data gaps remain that limit our capacity to track SDG progress, the IAEG-SDG continues to actively expand country coverage where data is still missing, to develop new methods and identify new data sources to disaggregate the indicators by key traits, such as gender, and to create indicators that describe progress for local areas.
The impetus to fill data gaps for the SDG indicators draws principally from the assumption that countries are planning and developing their policies with the SDG goals and targets as their guiding framework. SDG proponents posited that the universal adoption of Agenda 2030 would trigger cross-country convergence in policy regimes (i.e. the processes and organizational structures that develop policies and programs and allocate resources). This convergence would lead to improved knowledge sharing on policy design and performance as well as changes in how supporting institutions (e.g., central agencies and line ministries in national governments) are organized. With this convergence, a common set of SDG monitoring indicators would have two benefits. First, it facilitates cross-country comparisons on performance. Second, countries could pool their intellectual and financial resources to develop common sources and methods to assess the efficacy of their policies and programs.
As we enter 2023, I take stock of whether the SDGs have significantly impacted global and national policymaking. Have policymakers adopted the SDGs as their policymaking frame of reference? If policymakers have not yet adopted this approach, are they likely to in the remaining seven years of the 2030 Agenda? And if they are unlikely to embrace the SDGs as their guiding policy framework, where should resources be directed to improve data for the SDGs over the next seven years?
Have the SDGs Changed How Policies Have Been Made at the Global and National Levels?
Through the first seven years of the 2030 Agenda, the impact of the SDGs on how policies are developed may cause disappointment, as recent research reveals that the SDGs’ impact on policymaking processes and the configuration of institutions at the global and national levels has been limited thus far.
At the national level, state and non-state actors are at work implementing the 2030 Agenda, but not through a policy regime encouraged by the SDG framework. Rather, implementation efforts of national governments have primarily relied on their existing policy regimes, with SDG progress mostly coinciding with policies that were previously prioritized. Also, there is little evidence that government institutions or resource allocation mechanisms have changed since the 2030 Agenda was adopted. And we can’t tell if national government policies have become more cohesive since the adoption of the SDGs, as reporting on SDG indicator 17.14.1 - mechanisms in place to enhance policy coherence for sustainable development – remains mostly unreported[1].
At the global level, evidence is also lacking that the SDGs have had a transformative impact on the mandates, practices, or resource allocation of international organizations and institutions within the United Nations system [2],[3]. But one bright spot can be found at the local level, where cities have proven more progressive than central governments in building coalitions for SDG implementation.
The findings that the SDGs have not changed policy regimes should not come as a shock, as these regimes at the national and global levels were established long before the advent of the 2030 Agenda. Academics studying theories of policy change conceptualize policymaking as a process that develops its own self-reinforcing trajectory or “path.” As pathways exhibited by policy regimes have a lot of momentum, they will only shift when exogenous factors are big enough to “destabilize” these paths.
And the evidence to date suggests the 2030 Agenda has not been powerful enough to destabilize policy pathways, but instead, research points to the COVID-19 pandemic as a significant destabilizer. Although there is no concrete research yet, one can extrapolate that the cascading crises of the pandemic, climate change, the war in Ukraine, inflation, and indebtedness will have had a “snowball effect,” reinforcing the disruption of COVID-19 on policy pathways for the long-term.
The SDGs’ Positive Impact on Fostering Knowledge Exchange and Raising Awareness
Although the SDGs have not yet transformed how policy is designed and implemented, they have helped to mobilize voluntary national reviews (VNRs) and peer learning, as well as provide the impetus for innovations in how progress is monitored through the efforts of the IAEG-SDG described above. These indicators are now an important part of the evidence underpinning the more than 330 Voluntary National Reviews that have been conducted to date to track countries’ performance against the SDGs.
And the SDGs’ contribution to a universally accepted framework for monitoring progress is important. Prior to the SDGs, countries did not have a standardized way to compare their development performance with their peers across a broad array of development objectives (e.g., health, education, reducing inequalities, climate, ending poverty, etc.). Nor did countries have a common language to discuss and share experiences when tackling these development issues. Furthermore, the SDGs have positively impacted discourse and knowledge exchange beyond government officials. Many civil society and private sector actors have become SDG-conversant, facilitating greater discourse within countries across government and non-government actors.
The Impact of the SDGs on Data Innovations to Support Policymaking is Less Clear
Policies need to be designed with local conditions in mind, and, as such, a range of data are marshalled to assist policymakers at different stages of the policy process. While, monitoring indicators are essential for the evaluation of policy effectiveness over time, designing and testing policies often require other forms of data. Consider, for example, that a mix of policy measures is often required to achieve progress against a single monitoring indicator with each of these measures requiring unique data for testing policy parameters (e.g., means testing social protection programs) and developing low-cost ways to administer the intervention during the implementation phase. Also, developing responses to complex and/or fast-moving shocks typically proceeds in an experimentalist manner, with new data adapting as the experiments proceed.
In the case of the SDGs, the development of data supporting policy design has largely flown under the radar relative to the visible processes supporting data and methodological improvements to the SDG monitoring framework. As such, it is difficult to assess whether the SDGs triggered innovations in data for policy design relative to the data improvements for SDG monitoring. And as progress on the SDGs primarily reflects prior government priorities, it is unlikely that Agenda 2030 triggered much of an increase in new forms of data for policy design.
Looking Ahead
TReNDS has previously documented how the COVID-19 pandemic triggered new intra-governmental collaborations to provide decision-makers with evidence to manage the crisis. These collaborations provide proxy evidence of the experimentalist approach to policy development, spawning data supporting policy design that the SDG framework has yet to trigger. Policymakers responding to the ongoing cascading crises (described earlier) will continue the experimental and reactive approach to policy development that they adopted during the pandemic. As such, these crises are likely to be the main driver for innovations in data to design and test public policies and programs.
As we move towards the September 2023 SDG Summit, I have a few thoughts on how we can get the most bang for the buck on future improvements to the SDG indicator framework.
First, prioritize indicators for SDGs requiring collective actions for the most critical global problems. Two areas immediately jump to mind - climate change and safeguarding the environment and biodiversity - as both have benefited from the SDGs’ emphasis on cross-country monitoring and require collective (i.e. multilateral) action. And as many countries still struggle to produce the data and indicators to protect the environment and biodiversity, support programs and initiatives to improve data in these areas should be a focus.
Second, prioritize improvements to country or local level indicators where civil society is contributing to policy change. Many civil society organizations (CSOs) use the SDGs as a reference framework to hold governments accountable, with some scholars pointing to the advantages of granting larger roles to CSOs in shaping and implementing policy initiatives. Effective CSO participation in policy pathways requires: i) the ability of CSOs to use data to advocate for policy changes – especially at local levels and where the SDGs have triggered changes in policy regimes; and ii) greater CSO awareness of what data is available locally and to influence what data the government collects next.
Lastly, global leaders meeting in September should consider what more can be done to improve the VNR knowledge exchange process? For example, incorporating peer reviews into VNR knowledge exchanges could promote individual and collective behavioral change among UN member states, drawing from the experience of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) members’ process. Peer reviews can help transform policy regimes, as they make recommendations and suggestions for improvement and contribute to a follow-up process that ensures that lessons are translated into policies, programs, and practices of the country under review. Also learning from the individual DAC peer review process, the UN could improve how it captures lessons and trends that emerge across peer reviews and facilitate learning exercises between peers on areas of particular interest.
In 2023, TReNDS will be reflecting further on these topics as part of its workstream on ‘Testing the Assumptions of the Data Revolution,’ and I am hopeful that these issues will become part of the broader discussion among the data for development community as we move towards the SDG Summit in September.
[1] Only six countries have reported data so far, and no countries have reported data for two or more years.
[2] Kloke-Lesch, A. in The Palgrave Handbook of Development Cooperation for Achieving the 2030 Agenda: Contested Collaboration (eds Chaturverdi, S. et al.) 127-163 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
[3] Pérez-Pineda, J. A. & Wehrmann, D. in The Palgrave Handbook of Development Cooperation for Achieving the 2030 Agenda: Contested Collaboration (eds Chaturverdi, S. et al.) 649–670 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).