This month Open Data Watch joined meetings all over the world to continue to support data-driven solutions and strong statistical capacity. In early October, PARIS21 and UN Women collaborated to strengthen national statistical systems and produce quality gender statistics. To commemorate World Statistics Day on October 20th Palestine held a Data Festival to promote creative initiatives such as the Data Science initiative which aims to improve decision making at all levels. To end the month, SDSN TReNDS held an event in Los Angeles on, Data Science and the Sustainable Development Goals, which joined data experts to take a close look at how the City of Los Angeles measures the Sustainable Development Goals.
Below is a list of additional sustainable development data articles and reports published in October. If there is something else to add, please contact us.
October
Mining the Web for Insights on Violence Against Women (October)
Data2X releases a brief examining how data collected from social media platforms can provide insights into attitudes and social norms around gender-based violence. After analyzing YouTube videos on 12 topics drawn from the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) they determined that videos with negative views on women were receiving more likes. (source)
Data Deprivation: Progress Has Stalled (October)
Eric Swanson and Lorenz Noe look into the data gaps needed to monitor the SDG 1, ending poverty in all its forms everywhere. They argue that the delay in reporting surveys from the past three years has left us with scarce poverty data, even in 2019. (source)
The Invisibility of Adolescents Within the SDGs (October)
Silvia Guglielmi and Nicola Jones criticize the 2030 Agenda framework and argue that the framework is not delivering enough granularity on age and gender and therefore is leaving adolescents invisible. They highlight that only 28 SDG indicators explicitly call for disaggregation by gender or age categories. (source)
Assessing Data and Statistical Capacity Gaps for Better Gender Statistics Framework and Implementation Guidelines (October)
PARIS21 releases a document assessing the state of gender statistics around the world and the capacity of national statistical systems. The document contains multiple frameworks and tools for the assessment of official gender statistics relating to the capacity of the national statistical system. (source)
Melinda Gates: Here’s Why I’m Committing $1 Billion to Promote Gender Equality (10/2)
Melinda Gates announces her commitment to donate 1 billion USD to promoting gender equality in the United States. She reveals that her company, Pivotal Ventures, will work to expand the power and influence of women in the United States. (source)
Hidden populations and the Sustainable Development Goals (10/3)
Recent work conducted by the University of Cape Town (UCT) is filling the information gap surrounding monitoring and evaluation services that track the implementation of access to sexual and reproductive health for people with disabilities. They explain that it is nearly impossible for deaf women to be identified through medical records. (source)
Data for Now: Q&A with Claire Melamed (Voice of America) (10/3)
Claire Melamed from the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data speaks about the new Data for Now Initiative which increases the quality of SDG data by fostering public-private partnerships and fortifying information sharing. (source)
Follow the Data Podcast Episode 56 Census Series- The Bureau (10/6)
Bloomberg Philanthropies podcast, “Follow the Data” highlights how their work is driving change and making an impact in the areas of education, the arts, the environment, public health, and government innovation. Their most recent episode covers the impact of the U.S. census in Michigan. (source)
Are women and youth employment rates a matter of survey design and data quality? (10/7)
Valentina Costa and Sam Desiere author a post for the World Bank blog on the importance of individual-level employment data. They explain that individual-level employment data are crucial to monitoring the SDGs and to advancing labor data on women and girls. (source)
A data manifesto to boost infrastructure safety (10/15)
Avneedp Dhingrs reviews a new data manifesto released by the Open Data Institute and Lloyd’s Registrar Foundation which encourages sharing of engineering data among private organizations as well as governments to boost infrastructure safety. (source)
Data gaps threaten the achievement of development goals in Africa (10/15)
Sara Jerving from Devex explains how the dearth of development data in Africa will threaten the continent’s ability to accomplish the SDGs. She cites a study from the Mo Ibrahim Foundation which explains that the availability of public data in Africa has declined since the adoption of the SDGs in 2015. (source)
International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (10/17)
Achim Steiner from UNDP shares a message on the 27th anniversary of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. He reflects on the rapid decline of poverty in the past three decades and the importance of studying poverty multidimensionally by including indicators such as access to clean drinking water and electricity. (source)
Sharing Open Data for both agriculture and nutrition (10/19)
SciTech Europa discusses the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition group, a growing group of partners including national governments, NGOs, international organizations, and the private sector. The group promotes proactive sharing of open data involving agriculture and nutrition. (source)
Addressing the Challenges of Drafting Contracts for Data Collaboration Data and policy (10/23)
Data and Policy releases an article about the difficulties organizations face when they try to leverage data across sectors while also explaining the importance of these collaboratives as part of data-driven innovation in which different sectors provide access to data for public value. (source)
Digital civil registration accelerating SDG progress (10/25)
Gilbert Nakweya publish an article on SciDevNet on technological innovations such as mobile devices and biometrics which help register citizens. They reviewed case studies from around the world that demonstrate the potency of digital civil registration and identity systems can which help accelerate progress towards development targets such as poverty, gender equality, migration, and universal health coverage. (source)
Why we must urgently close the data gap to end violence against women (10/27)
Modern Diplomacy publishes an article on the data gaps surrounding violence against women. They explain that the Beijing +25 platform calls for the prevention and elimination of all forms of violence against women, but that this will be contingent on the stronger data. (source)
One piece of the population data puzzle: civil registration and identity management systems to help the extreme poor (10/29)
Jenna Slotin and Keren Bett author a piece for the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data on the importance of civil registration. They address the various roles of civil registration for identity management and for filling the data gaps within the Sustainable Development Goals. (source)
Open data could save more tigers (10/30)
Nature calls for India to release the raw data on the amount tigers in the nation. They emphasize that currently, researchers and scientists cannot access the full data set that the Indian government collects during the national tiger census. (source)
Open data and political integrity (10/30)
Transparency International, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Government Transparency Institute all join to discuss the intersection of private and public interests and to learn more about open data for political integrity. As part of this discussion, they also mention that Transparency International is updating their own Integrity Watch online to track these issues. (source)