1. Developing a SDG Reporting Platform – UK perspective
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Joanne Evans

2. National Statistics in the UK
Decentralised Government Statistical Service
Office for National Statistics (ONS)
Government Departments
Devolved Administrations
Scotland
Wales
Northern Ireland
The UK has a decentralised statistical system. Combined, the statisticians, researchers and economists form the ‘Government Statistical Service’, but they may work in the Office for National Statistics, in a Government Department, or in one of the Devolved Administrations – the Scottish, Welsh or Northern Ireland Governments

3. Proposed SDG Data Flow Model
Government Departments
ONS
Custodian Agencies
Devolved Administrations
Scotland
Wales
Northern Ireland
The UK will coordinate SDG data for the global indicators from the devolved administrations and other government departments, through the ONS, to the custodian agencies and ultimately on to the UN. it’s a collaborative process.
The advantage for users of this approach is that all SDG information from the UK about the global indicators will be available in one place.
UN Global Database

4. SDG Reporting – where to start?
SDG Team
Data Science Campus
Feasibility study
Short term – re-use USA platform
Longer term – move to ONS architecture
A key thread through the SDGs has been transparency; open government, so we knew from the start that we wanted to make sure we made our data accessible to all users. We joined forces with our data science campus and carried out a feasibility study looking at options for collecting and disseminating UK data for global SDG indicators. This study identified a number of options, but ultimately recommended re-using the US tool in the short to medium term. ONS is currently redeveloping its architecture?? (Ann – is this true? Is it the right language?) and our longer term aim is move the reporting of SDGs to the ONS architecture once it is mature enough.

5. Benefits Cost Time Flexibility minimal software or hardware investment
quick to set up
Flexibility
easy to share and to collaborate on development
One of the main plusses for this choice was its relative ease, or its low technological debt. Everything is hosted on a site called GitHub, meaning that we needed nothing beyond a single computer, a developer and a GitHub account or ‘organisation’.
The key is getting the right developer skills in place.
Once you have this, it is very quick to set up a ‘shell’ site, that is a site without data. Our developer set up the shell site in less than a day as a proof of concept. Setting up our own GitHub organisation and then creating an operational version of the site took a week, again with a single developer. Our team members set up their own accounts with higher level administrator permissions given to one of the team.

6. Developer Skills Required
Data providers and managers
GitHub:
Basic web-development skills (html, css)
Further platform development needs:
Javascript
Ruby
The tool has been developed using a site called GitHub Pages, (which uses a simple static-site generator called Jekyll and content editor called Prose.io). So you’ll need someone who is proficient in GitHub and Git, and has basic skills such as html, CSS. To develop the tool further, they’ll need knowledge of javascript and ruby.
You’ll need to train data providers and data managers – the US have a training manual to help with that

7. Next Steps Continued development collaboration with USA
Work on helping other countries use the software
We are going to continue our collaboration with the US. For example, they are working on a dashboard to show how much progress they’re making in terms of data acquisition, while we are developing the charts to better present data disaggregations and comparisons. We would also like to review the data structure within the tool, and working to separate the code for the website from the code for the data, so that when you make a copy of the website you only copy the code for the ‘shell’ and you don’t get a copy of the data. At the moment the code and data sit in the same repository, so when you fork the site you copy the data. We ran a script to create blank data files, but if we were to re-fork – or merge our changes back with another site – we would over-write our data files. We are also documenting the work we have done, and using this documentation to create educational guidelines, ‘how to’ documents that will make the process easier for others to copy.
Over the coming months, newer, enhanced versions of the tools will be available for other countries to freely reuse.
Improved version available in a few months

8. Reporting Platform Model

9. Contact Details sustainabledevelopment@ons.gov.uk Joanne Evans
Office for National Statistics
United Kingdom
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