WHAT
Harnessing Big Data Partnerships for National SDG Monitoring and Reporting: Exploring Opportunities, Challenges, and Best Practices
WHERE
Online
WHEN
Wednesday, July 14, 2021 from 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM EST
About the Event
National governments are central to monitoring and reporting on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), yet significant data gaps still remain in assessing country-level progress. In recent years, big data has grown considerably, becoming increasingly valuable for use by National Statistical Offices (NSOs) for more timely, granular, and accurate data at reduced costs and reporting burdens. And while big data has great potential to support national monitoring of the SDGs, these benefits must be weighed against a number of challenges and risks, including methodological problems, technical skills and capacity gaps, sustainability and access issues, and data privacy and security concerns. Moreover, despite some country advancements in using big data to support their SDG monitoring, applications to date remain limited. To address these challenges and effectively harness big data for national SDG monitoring, increased collaboration and partnership between NSOs and a broad range of partners across sectors are needed.
On the sidelines of this year’s High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), SDSN TReNDS and Partners for Review (P4R) will organize an event in which leading experts will discuss their experiences working with big data partnerships to support national SDG monitoring and reporting. This will include a discussion of emerging big data innovations for the SDGs, key challenges and barriers encountered during the partnership process, as well as practical steps for ensuring successful big data partnerships and long-term sustainability. During the event SDSN TReNDS and P4R will launch a jointly produced report and an accompanying digital repository on ‘Big Data and the Sustainable Development Goals: Innovations and Partnerships to Support National Monitoring and Reporting’.
Moderator/Panelists
Grant Cameron, SDSN TReNDS Director (Moderator)
Thomas Wollnik, Head of Programme, P4R
Cameron Allen, SDSN TReNDS’ Senior Advisor and Adjunct Research Fellow at Monash Sustainable Development Institute
Rachel Bowers, ODI Fellow, Secretariat at the Ghana Statistical Service
Monica Scannapieco, Head of Division at ISTAT Enterprise Architecture, Big Data
Tim Harris, User Engagement Lead, FCDO Data Science Hub