Bern Network News Today

In recent years and in multiple fora, governments around the world have recognized that all countries need to have accessible, timely, and reliable disaggregated data to measure progress and ensure no one is left behind in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The UN’s High-level Group for Partnership, Coordination and Capacity-Building for Statistics for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development met to review implementation of the Cape Town Global Action Plan for sustainable development data. A new framework for the Global Action Plan will be reviewed during the 54th session of the UN Statistical Commission in March 2022. The HLG also discussed the Bern Data Compact for the Decade of Action on the SDGs.

Statistics are at the core of modern decision-making. They tell policymakers how many people are in the hospital, how the economy is doing, and by how much CO2 emissions are ascending. In the past year, their importance rose as official...

Shaida Badiee is a former director of the World Bank’s Development Data Group and now leads an NGO, Open Data Watch. Credit: IISD/ENB | Kiara Worth After nearly two decades running the World Bank’s Development Data Group, Shaida Badiee now works to help developing nations improve their data systems. And she has a clear message for donor countries: individual aid projects can be helpful, but the real need is for basic data infrastructure During her long career in strategic data management, S...