Webinar 5 | More and Better Financing for Development Data

⯇ WEBINAR SERIES

Details

Wednesday, 2 October 2019 at 3 PM CET

Context

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development represents the most ambitious effort in history to bring people out of poverty and create a more sustainable world. There is no question that without meaningful data, we can’t plan or asses any progress in reaching the goals. Yet today, a third of the way to 2030, many countries still lack the basic data required to understand the scope of their challenges, let alone meet the 17 goals. In fact, 34 SDG indicators still do not have an internationally established methodology and another 88 SDG indicators are not regularly produced by countries .

While more money isn’t the solution alone, it is also clear that decades of underinvestment in statistical systems in low-income countries has seriously hindered their ability to produce reliable data. The latest PARIS21 Partner Report on Support to Statistics finds that developing countries received commitments of only USD 689 million for statistics in 2017. Compared with the result of a recent study published by the Bern Network—an alliance of institutions calling for more and better funding for development data—that 1.3 billion is needed to advance sustainable development data, this is a shortfall of around 600 million dollars, a significant sum.

Questions to be addressed

So, with only about 10 years left in Agenda 2030, how does the development data community get to where it needs to be? How can we support countries in raising domestic resources, incentivises donors to step up their commitments to support national systems and help the international data and statistics community to do a better job in matching supply and demand for capacity development?

This webinar will shed some lights on these and related questions. It brings together a range of expert speakers to tackle the issue of financing the sustainable development agenda. We will hear from those from the demand side (i.e. the advocates who are calling more and better funding) and those from the supply side (i.e. the donors who are financing this agenda). Additionally, we will hear from those from national statistical systems to explore what a resource-constrained environment looks like day-to-day and how statistical offices cope with challenges.

Lastly, the webinar will discuss the current solutions to the financing agenda, placing particular focus on the action agenda defined of the Bern Network, including the proposal for a Global Alliance and Data Financing Facility to strengthen development data.

Featured speakers

Thomas Gass, Ambassador, Assistant Director General Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, SDC South Cooperation
Ariunzaya Ayush, Chair of the National Statistics Office of Mongolia
Emily Courey Pryor, Executive Director, Data2X
Shaida Badiee, Managing Director, Open Data Watch
Johannes Jütting, Executive Head, PARIS21