1. SDMX for Sustainable Development Goals Indicators: The Way Forward
Abdulla Gozalov
United Nations Statistics Division

2. Sustainable Development Goals
From the United Nations General Assembly resolution 70/1 “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development“
74. Follow-up and review processes at all levels will be guided by the following principles: …
(g) They will be rigorous and based on evidence, informed by country-led evaluations and data which is high-quality, accessible, timely, reliable and disaggregated by income, sex, age, race, ethnicity, migration status, disability and geographic location and other characteristics relevant in national contexts.

3. SDMX-SDGs Working Group
Working Group on SDMX for SDG Indicators established by IAEG-SDGs in April 2016
Composed of 12 countries, 10 international agencies
Chaired by France
UNSD acts as the Secretariat
First meeting in October 2016
Monthly virtual, annual physical meetings

4. SDMX-SDGs: Objectives
Develop global Data Structure Definition(s) and Metadata Structure Definition(s) for SDG Indicators
Standards for the packaging of SDGs data and metadata including concepts, codes, structures
Develop, pilot, and establish data exchange mechanisms for SDG indicators
Reporting and dissemination at national, regional, global level

5. Challenges
Highly disaggregated dataset mandated by the General Assembly
Methodology under development for many of the indicators and breakdowns
SDMX solution must be customizable for dissemination by countries

6. Opportunities Uniform data model
Read and correctly interpret SDGs data from any source: national, regional, global
Uniform data access and dissemination
SDMX-based Application Programming Interface (API): JSON, XML, CSV
Greatly reduced reporting burden
Common tools, visualizations, platforms…

7. SDMX-SDGs: Timeline Draft DSD(s): first draft Feb 2018
Pilot data exchange: completed in Sep 2018
With participation of about 5 countries and 5 custodian agencies
Official DSD: released Jun 2019
Metadata exchange to be piloted from late 2019

8. SDG datasets Global dataset compiled and published by UNSD
Annual reporting
Internationally comparable country-level data
Regional and global aggregates
Regional datasets compiled by regional agencies
Customized regional indicator sets
Indicators may be comparable at regional or global level
National datasets compiled by the countries
Voluntary reporting of indicator set customized based on the country’s priorities
Indicators do not necessarily follow global methodology
Emphasis on subnational data

9. National and International Data
National and international data and metadata will be compared and analyzed at the global SDG Platform
Greatly simplified by SDMX
Reasons for differences: see metadata!
Data exchange with 20 countries funded through the UNSD-DFID Project on SDG Monitoring
Additional capacity building for SDMX exchange through the DA-10 and other projects

10. What does it take to implement SDMX exchange?
Available no-cost tools greatly simplify the implementation
Adaptable to various scenarios
Existing database
Migration to a new database
No database

11. What then? Establish data exchange with the global SDG platform
Comparison between national and global indicators
Dissemination platforms and other tools with support for SDMX
Greatly reduced cost of implementation

12. THANK YOU Abdulla Gozalov Email: gozalov un.org