WHAT
Revisiting Assumptions About the Data Revolution: Where Have We Made Progress and Where Are We Being Held Back
WHERE
Online
WHEN
Tuesday, January 9th, 2024 from 9:00 - 10:00 AM EST
About the Event
In 2014, the UN Secretary-General’s Independent Expert Advisory Group published its flagship report, “A World That Counts: Mobilizing the Data Revolution For Sustainable Development,” helping to launch a myriad of initiatives and entities to support countries in mobilizing new technologies and data to accelerate sustainable development. The report propounded a number of key assumptions, including that the public sector would be the primary institutional sector to guide data innovations for sustainable development and that data would serve as a standardizing force for greater accountability, openness, and responsiveness within government and empower individuals to increase their civic participation.
Ten years after the release of the report and the formal adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the global environment has changed substantially. The amount of data being produced is unprecedented, governments have had to contend with a multitude of complex crises on a scale unlike ever before, the private sector has proven to be a prominent force in driving data innovations, and with the growing number of new technologies, including AI, privacy and legal concerns have become increasingly salient. It’s clear that the global data community is now at a crossroads to reflect on the progress we’ve made, what institutional shifts are needed to deliver on the promise of the data revolution, and how we should retool our thinking in the years ahead given the unanticipated challenges and new environment in which we are working.
In light of this, SDSN TReNDS and its expert members will come together for an event that will address the assumptions that underpin A World That Counts at the midpoint of the SDGs. The session will open with an overview of TReNDS’ analysis on the issue to set the scene, followed by a discussion with our expert members, and close with a polling and Q&A session with the audience to solicit recommendations on where the data community needs to maintain focus in the years ahead. It will also formally launch the Assumptions Project, which features an interactive website, and summarizes where and how we have made progress using data as a tool and resource for progress toward the SDGs, and will constructively assess the core assumptions that underpin the World That Counts report.
Featured Speakers:
Shaida Badiee, Open Data Watch
Lisa Grace Bersales, Philippines’ Commission on Population and Development
Grant Cameron, Consultant and past SDSN TReNDS Director
Bob Chen, past CIESIN Director
Jessica Espey, University of Bristol
Alex Fischer, Monash Sustainable Development Institute
Jonathan Glennie, Global Nation
Castelline Tilus, SDSN TReNDS