Monthly Archive: November 2015

Briefings

SDG Indicators and Data: Who collects? Who reports? Who benefits?

By Barbara Adams

As part of its mandate to develop an indicator framework by which to monitor the goals and targets of the post-2015 development agenda, the Inter-agency and Expert Group on SDGs (IAEG-SDGs) held its second meeting in Bangkok, 26-28 October 2015. The objective was to seek agreement on the proposed indicators for each target—keeping in mind that indicators alone can never be sufficient to fully measure progress on the goals. More specifically, it was to move provisional indicators marked yellow—needing further agreement—to either green—agreed by all parties—or grey—no agreement possible. As a result, there are now 159 green indicators (including 52 moved from yellow and 9 new ones), and 62 greys (including 28 moved from yellow plus 5 new ones). Read more…

Blog

SDG indicators: Counting the trees, hiding the forest

By Roberto Bissio

The Inter-Agency Experts Group agrees on 159 indicators for most of the SDG targets, but in too many cases what they suggest to measure is not what the governments agree to so. To acknowledge the difficulties in monitoring the Agenda 2030 because of the complexities of the issues, the lack of statistical capacity in many countries or even the ambiguities in the wording that made the agreement possible is sensible. To propose indicators that substantially rewrite key aspects of the consensus is simply unacceptable.