Ms. Lisa Grace S. Bersales, National Statistician and Head of the Philippine Statistics Authority
National mechanisms for monitoring progress and reporting on implementation for the achievement of SDGs
United Nations high- level political forum on sustainable development (HLPF) 14 July 2016
Lisa Grace S. Bersales
National Statistician and Civil Registrar General Philippine Statistics Authority(PSA)
1.Successful experience
Learning from the MDGs, I find that a good practice is for countries to have a clear governance structure for implementation and monitoring of the SDGs , with active engagement of the national statistics office (NSO) in monitoring.
In the monitoring process, the NSO has a crucial role in the national indicators framework. The Philippines’ statistics authority has played an active role in the interagency and expert group on SDGs indicators that has developed the 230 unique global SDGs indicators agreed upon by the UN Statistical Commission in March 2016. In the Philippines, we have already done a series of workshops on SDGs indicators using the global indicator framework as benchmark. The recent one was just in May this year where we evaluated the indicators using the tier system of the expert group and determined data availability including disaggregations .
2.Challenges
The data challenge of leaving no one behind is data disaggregation and the different types of resources required to do this – human resources with the capacity for innovations as well as costing the generation of each indicator including the disaggregation needed. For the latter, we are piloting the PARIS21 instrument , ADAPT in costing the generation of indicators.
3.Moving forward
We shall build on our existing Coordination mechanism—our various sectoral interagency committees , our subnational statistical committees – headed by ministries that implement our countries development plan with the PSA serving as technical secretariat.
Multistakeholder Partnerships both global and within the country
We shall continue to use the traditional sources of official statistics to generate the indicators ( censuses and surveys), but we shall explore the use of administrative data , registries, private sector data , civil society and citizen-generated data to build a data ecosystem in the country that shall provide data to address the data challenge of leaving no one behind...with the PSA serving its current role of champion of the UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics in the country. This will require the
help of various stakeholders including the academe. Of the many initiatives we are doing, I would like to share with you that we shall pilot within the coming two months the development of this data ecosystem in two provinces even as we already work on the national and eighteen Philippine regions’ data needs.
On the global initiatives on capacity building, coordination, and partnership, the Philippines looks forward to the coming World Data Forum in January next year which id organized by the High Level Group on partnership, coordination and capacity building.
4. Main takeaway
To address the data challenge of monitoring the SDGs, a national data ecosystem utilizing various sources of data should be developed by countries with the NSO serving as coordinator and champion of standards for data quality and comparability... this will ensure that even as indicators shall be contextualized in the country , there will be coherence in the national and global monitoring .
On participation of different stakeholders , the IAEG SDGs has been engaging them with special dialogues with CSOs and private sector in our discussions. In the Philippines, the planning ministry and the NSO has done the same and we continue to do so.
United Nations high- level political forum on sustainable development (HLPF) 14 July 2016
Lisa Grace S. Bersales
National Statistician and Civil Registrar General Philippine Statistics Authority(PSA)
1.Successful experience
Learning from the MDGs, I find that a good practice is for countries to have a clear governance structure for implementation and monitoring of the SDGs , with active engagement of the national statistics office (NSO) in monitoring.
In the monitoring process, the NSO has a crucial role in the national indicators framework. The Philippines’ statistics authority has played an active role in the interagency and expert group on SDGs indicators that has developed the 230 unique global SDGs indicators agreed upon by the UN Statistical Commission in March 2016. In the Philippines, we have already done a series of workshops on SDGs indicators using the global indicator framework as benchmark. The recent one was just in May this year where we evaluated the indicators using the tier system of the expert group and determined data availability including disaggregations .
2.Challenges
The data challenge of leaving no one behind is data disaggregation and the different types of resources required to do this – human resources with the capacity for innovations as well as costing the generation of each indicator including the disaggregation needed. For the latter, we are piloting the PARIS21 instrument , ADAPT in costing the generation of indicators.
3.Moving forward
We shall build on our existing Coordination mechanism—our various sectoral interagency committees , our subnational statistical committees – headed by ministries that implement our countries development plan with the PSA serving as technical secretariat.
Multistakeholder Partnerships both global and within the country
We shall continue to use the traditional sources of official statistics to generate the indicators ( censuses and surveys), but we shall explore the use of administrative data , registries, private sector data , civil society and citizen-generated data to build a data ecosystem in the country that shall provide data to address the data challenge of leaving no one behind...with the PSA serving its current role of champion of the UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics in the country. This will require the
help of various stakeholders including the academe. Of the many initiatives we are doing, I would like to share with you that we shall pilot within the coming two months the development of this data ecosystem in two provinces even as we already work on the national and eighteen Philippine regions’ data needs.
On the global initiatives on capacity building, coordination, and partnership, the Philippines looks forward to the coming World Data Forum in January next year which id organized by the High Level Group on partnership, coordination and capacity building.
4. Main takeaway
To address the data challenge of monitoring the SDGs, a national data ecosystem utilizing various sources of data should be developed by countries with the NSO serving as coordinator and champion of standards for data quality and comparability... this will ensure that even as indicators shall be contextualized in the country , there will be coherence in the national and global monitoring .
On participation of different stakeholders , the IAEG SDGs has been engaging them with special dialogues with CSOs and private sector in our discussions. In the Philippines, the planning ministry and the NSO has done the same and we continue to do so.