The SDG National Reporting Initiative was launched in August 2017 as a two-year initiative led by the Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE) and funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to facilitate greater information-sharing on SDG reporting between international, regional, and local communities.
This report summarizes the state of SDG reporting as well as challenges and successes identified during CODE’s implementation of the SDG National Reporting Initiative. From August 2017 to August 2019, the CODE team undertook wide-ranging stakeholder consultations. The findings in this report build on the substantial work of national governments and organizations including the UN Statistics Division (UNSD), the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the World Bank, The Partnership in Statistics for Development in the 21st Century (PARIS21), the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD), and Open Data Watch, among many others.
Three key lessons learned:
- There is no one-size-fits-all approach to SDG reporting. Governments must be empowered to choose solutions that are sustainable and that leverage their existing data platforms, resources, and relationships.
- Tools and best practices related to SDG reporting are not limited to national governments. These resources can be utilized by other stakeholder communities including subnational governments, regional organizations, and civil society groups.
- SDG NRPs are valuable only when they serve the needs of end users. More work needs to be done to make disaggregated data available through these platforms and to make national reporting platforms more usable overall.
