Hosted in Medellín, Colombia by Ruta N and DANE and organized by the United Nations and partners in conjunction with the World Data Forum, UN Datathon 2024 will challenge participants to localize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the city level, with a focus on Medellín, Colombia. The event centers on urban sustainable development, addressing three critical themes: Sustainable Tourism, Urban Waste Management, and Circular Economy. Teams will develop innovative, data-driven solutions that strike a balance between economic growth, environmental preservation, and community well-being.

The Datathon aims to showcase how localizing SDGs can foster resilient, inclusive cities and demonstrate how Medellín’s strategies can serve as blueprints for sustainable urban development globally.

As the world grapples with numerous global challenges, including environmental issues, climate change, health crises, food insecurity, economic recovery, and human displacement, the need for knowledge integration has never been more critical. Amid a data landscape with fast-increasing volumes of data, information remains compartmentalised to pre-defined scales and fields, rarely building its way up to collective knowledge. The statistical community, the data science community, the geospatial community and the modelling community are tasked with delivering this integrated knowledge, to shed light on the ongoing “wicked problems”—intertwined, multistakeholder and with potential solutions dependent on subjective, competing interests.

The purpose of the conference is to address and share knowledge on these emerging issues that require the timely and flexible production of integrated scientific, statistical and geospatial information. This involves collaboration with strategic partners from the public and private sectors, as well as from academic and research institutes, and needs a paradigm shift that will favour open synthesis to contribute and reuse knowledge and apply it toward decision making. The conference will consist of a ministerial opening, high-level panels, technical sessions as well as a several workshops. The overall theme of the conference is “Informing Climate Change and Sustainable Development policies with integrated data”.

The digital economy heavily relies on ICT for information management, enhancing productivity supported by ICT goods, services, and trade. This economy is characterized by core technologies (e.g., semiconductors, computers), enabling infrastructures (e.g., the Internet), and digitalized sectors like finance and media. Despite widespread digitalization, traditional economic metrics often overlook digital aspects. The Digital Supply-Use Tables (SUTs) framework addresses this by incorporating digital products and actors into national statistics.

The 5th International Seminar aims to equip staff from developing countries' NSOs with skills to produce high-quality digital economy statistics, supporting informed policymaking and sustainable development.

This webinar aims to explore cutting-edge approaches for handling sensitive microdata while preserving privacy. Experts will discuss state-of-the-art techniques, real-world applications, and collaborative efforts across international projects. Join us for insightful presentations, engaging discussions, and an open Q&A session.

The members of the Data Science Leader's Network (DSLN), under the umbrella of the Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics, have agreed to develop a DSLN Playbook with the objective to provide a comprehensive guide for integrating data science into the work of National Statistical Offices, and to offer a systematic approach to piloting projects, pooling resources, documenting successes, and overcoming institutional barriers.

The "playbook" format has been chosen as a way of capturing (in a user-friendly manner) a structured set of practical guidelines designed to help NSOs achieve specific objectives towards the mainstreaming of data science in the day-to-day business of official statistics, providing both strategic and tactical guidance. It aims to be a practical, hands-on resource that can be easily consulted and followed by practitioners at the frontlines of statistical work, with step-by-step procedures, best practices, checklists, and real-world examples that help a team understand not just the "what" but also the "how" of implementation.

The event will be an opportunity to present and discuss the progress towards the development of the Data Science Playbook, based on the outcome of the 2nd Sprint of the Data Science Leaders' Network, which took place in Dubai from 22 to 24 January, as part of the International Seminar on Data Science for the Statistical and Transport Communities.

The webinar is an overview of the report on the 10-years of use of Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics. The survey details will be described along with results and recommendation based on the survey. The full report of the 10-year review has been released as a background document to the Statistical Commission and is available here.

Integrating data science into the production of official statistics to inform and enhance efficacy of policy decisions, with a special focus on the transport sector.

Get practical insights into human-centric transformation of transport information systems and see how modern transportation information systems play a pivotal role in designing and implementing sustainable transportation policies utilizing new data sources and technologies.

The second sprint of the Data Science Leaders Network will focus on developing a detailed outline of a playbook to integrate data science into National Statistical Offices.

The International seminar will also feature a workshops on Mobile Phone Data in transport statistics and hands-on GIS training for SDGs.

Leverage technology and your expertise to develop innovative solutions for a more sustainable and equitable future.

Join us on this journey of innovation, exploration, and problem-solving as we harness the power of data to create a more sustainable and resilient world.

Datathon participants will develop innovative data-driven applications, tools or statistical models combining geospatial data with other data sources to help advance the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Register today!

During the webinar we will announce the survey on the 10-year review of the UNCEBD. The objective of the webinar is to raise awareness for the survey and generate interest by statistical agencies to complete the survey.

We would like to take this opportunity to evaluate, if NSOs and other statistical agencies are familiar with the work of the UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics (UNCEBD, previously also known as the Global Working Group on Big Data for Official Statistics).

In this UNCEBD Open House, we will review of activities of the task teams, the regional and sector hubs and the UN Global Platform, and discuss four proposals, namely (A) a more systematic collaboration between the task teams and the regional and sector hubs to improve the synergies of methodological development with project and training activities; (B) active collaboration between UNCEBD and the Expert Group on Integration of Statistical and Geospatial Information (EG-ISGI); (C) the terms of reference for the Data Science Leaders' Network; and (D) concrete and practical use of privacy-enhancing technologies for access to sensitive data. This meeting serves the purpose of providing information as well as gathering additional ideas and proposals, which UNCEBD could use in further developing its work programme.

The UN-CEBD Task Team on Mobile Phone Data will be discussing the applications of mobile phone big data for official statistics in the following areas: Dynamic population and census, Tourism statistics, Migration statistics, Displacement and disaster statistics Information Society statistics, Transport statistics. The webinar will also take a look at various projects and case studies from around the world and provide an introduction to the new e-learning course developed by the task team.

The United Nations Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics (UNCEBD), Major Group for Children and Youth (MGCY) and Statistics Indonesia (BPS) hosted the "2022 UN Big Data Hackathon" in November 2022. It is jointly organized by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), Global Platform Regional Hubs (Rwanda, UAE, Brazil & China), UN Global Pulse, Asian Development Bank (ADB), Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), UK ONS Data Science Campus, Statistics Canada, and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in consultation with the members of the Task Teams of UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science.

Join us for the Closing Ceremony where we will be announcing and celebrating the winners of the Hackathon.

In recent years, almost every government has been faced with very serious challenges, such as the global health pandemic, supply chain disruption, rising energy and food prices, and decreasing household budgets. To handle these crises in the right way, our leaders need the right data at the right time. National statistical offices are tasked to provide these trusted, relevant, timely and high-quality data. All of those data are very sensitive in terms of private information on persons or businesses.

To gain access to the sensitive data while guaranteeing that privacy will be preserved, privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) are receiving increased attention. Whereas legal arrangements on data sharing can lead to unwanted breaches, the promise of PETs is that privacy is guaranteed. If you cannot see the original data at any time, you cannot by accident reveal any original information.

In this webinar, experts of the task team on PETs will launch the "UN Guide on PETs for Official Statistics". The program is as follows.

At this moment the world faces many global challenges related to environment, climate change, health, food insecurity, economic recovery or human displacement. To take appropriate action, governments have to understand and monitor the existing situation and therefore need relevant and timely data. The statistical community is tasked to deliver these data, in particular also data on the Sustainable Development Goals.

Emerging issues require timely and flexible production of indicators often in collaboration with strategic partners from public and private sector as well as academia. The Big Data Conference, which will take place from 7 till 11 November 2022 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, will focus on the use of new data sources and use of data science in dialogues with decision makers and experts from all stakeholder communities. It will also include the 2022 Big Data Hackathon.

The United Nations Privacy-Enhancing Technologies Lab, known as the PET Lab, will be running a third hackathon stream for the first time this year. The PET stream will take the form of a typical data science competition, such as those on the Kaggle or DrivenData platforms, but with one special new characteristic: participants will interact with training data only via privacy-enhancing technologies. For more information, check the UN PET Lab Hackathon page.

Following the AIS Big Data hackathon of 2020 and the UN Youth Hackathon of 2021, this year, The United Nations Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics (UNCEBD), Major Group for Children and Youth (MGCY) and Statistics Indonesia (BPS), is hosting the "2022 UN Big Data Hackathon". It is jointly organized by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), Global Platform Regional Hubs (Rwanda, UAE, Brazil & China), UN Global Pulse, Asian Development Bank (ADB), Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), UK ONS Data Science Campus, Statistics Canada, and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in consultation with the members of the Task Teams of UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science.

The Hackathon aims at developing ideas and solutions to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and assist in resolving Global challenges

The UN Statistics Division and Statistics Korea (National Statistical Office of the Republic of Korea) have co-organized every year an international seminar regarding important issues on the global statistical agenda since 2010. The seminar has covered a variety of social and economic issues from the perspective of statistics. For example, we have discussed the role of data and statistics in understanding open data and data disaggregation for reaching Sustainable Development Goals; and using big data for official statistics. As we recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the significance of timely data using new data sources and data linkage has increased and it has provided us with new opportunities to the international statistical community for discussing the data stewardship and the data security issues.

With all these efforts of accelerating the modernization of official statistics, it is still difficult to reach and involve the statistical offices in all corners of the world. To be more inclusive and bring modernization closer to home, four Regional Hubs for Big Data in support of the UN Global Platform were established in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), China (Hangzhou), Rwanda (Kigali) and UAE (Dubai) during 2020 and 2021. The main objectives of the Regional Hubs are the facilitation of innovation projects, the sharing of methods, algorithms and tools, and the provision of training in the use of Big Data and data science for the community of official statisticians in their respective regions. The Regional Hubs will be used to organize international seminars and workshops on data science and modernization of official statistics. For example, the National Bureau of Statistics of China organized thus far two international seminars in December 2020 and September 2021 in hybrid format, with in-person participation of national statisticians and remote participation of international statisticians.

The UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics has announced the launch of a pilot programme, to make international data sharing more secure by using Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs). The UN PET Lab is running a pilot program with several National Statistical Offices (NSOs). The lab will demonstrate that PETs can make fully compliant data sharing between organizations possible. PETs help data providers and data users to safely share information by using encryption and protocols that allow someone to produce useful output data without “seeing” the input data. They also typically ensure that data will be protected throughout its lifecycle, and that outputs cannot be used to ‘reverse engineer’ the original data. The PET Lab will see statistical organizations collaborate with technology providers who offer PET technologies. The Lab expects new users and providers to join in due course.

The Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Centre (FCSC) of the UAE together with the United Nations Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics (UN-CEBD) welcome the world to explore data science and big data during a three-day event at Expo 2020. FCSC also invites everyone to witness the ceremonial launch of the Regional Hub for Big Data and Data Science in UAE, which serves the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region.

The fourth Road to Expo 2020 will be held on 14 December and will focus on concrete methods for calculation of SDG-indicators by big data.

Sustainable Development Goals with their broad coverage of societal, environmental and economic fields pose challenges to a comprehensive statistical follow-up. Possible data sources towards this aim are widely discussed and data from non-traditional sources are frequently mentioned in this regard. In this context, data from non-traditional sources can include big data, geo data or citizen generated data. The webinar will present concrete examples of how selected SDG-indicators can be calculated with the use of non-traditional data, hereby giving countries a concrete tool for reinforcing their statistical follow-up on the SDG. Furthermore, the webinar will discuss future possibilities for monitoring the SDG with non-traditional data, including geo and citizen generated data. Finally, while giving an insight into monitoring the SDG by non-traditional data, the webinar will build up to the workshop during the EXPO 2020, which subsequently will expand the topic and present the calculation methods in detail.

The third Road to Expo 2020 webinar will focus on the Capacity development and training work of the UN-CEBD.

What products are currently available and what is currently under development to support big data capability building at the NSO? In this webinar, experts from the UN-CEBD Task Team on Training, Competencies and Capacity Development share the tools and products that are already in place for use by individuals and the NSO, such as the Big Data Competency Framework and Big Data Maturity Matrix. The team will also be casting an eye to the horizon, and showcasing some of the products currently under development, including the Big Data Training Curriculum, Big Data Training Catalogue, and the new Learning Management System. Presentations from the Shipping Data, Mobile Phone Data, Scanner Data and Earth Observation Data Task Teams, will highlight the latest progress with their big data training curricula and course developments.

The second Road to Expo 2020 Webinar will focus on Methods and Applications and will feature the work of the UN-CEBD Task teams.

What kind of methods do we need if we want to change real-time mobile positioning data into tourism or migration statistics, or estimate a consumer price index from high-frequency retail scanner data? In this webinar, experts from the UN-CEBD task teams will show how national statistical offices could use such data with corresponding new methods and new technologies to produce tourism, migration and price statistics. Since mobile phone data and retail scanner data are sensitive for persons and businesses, good privacy preserving measures should be taken to guarantee the protection of privacy and confidentiality. Experts from the UN-CEBD task team on privacy preserving techniques will show how advanced encryption and technology can help. This second webinar will describe the methodology which is being developed and will give hands-on demonstration of some applications.

As part of the EXPO2020, the Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Center of UAE (FCSC) will host a 3-day event in January 2022 organized jointly with the United Nations Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics (UN-CEBD). The event is about data solutions that will support the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and help in overcoming emergency situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, by using mobile phone data. It will showcase collaboration opportunities on the UN Global Platform and the Regional Hubs for Big Data, especially the Regional Hub in Dubai. From September to December 2021, UN-CEBD will organize a series of webinars in close collaboration with FCSC/UAE, paving the road to the event.

The first of these webinars will be held on 28 September and will focus on the UN Global Platform and show several projects currently running on the platform.

Eurostat together with the Scanner Data Task Team of the UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics will organize a workshop on scanner data and web scraping on 12-14 October 2021. The objectives of the workshop are to exchange on practical experiences related to the use of new data sources in consumer price statistics, and to present and discuss some of the work conducted by the Task Team and by the European Statistical System.

The seminar is jointly organized by the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS), the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), and the United Nations Global Platform for Big Data China Hub.

Two Invited Paper Sessions on using Mobile Phone Data for Official Statistics were presented at the ISI World Statistics Congress 2021:

• Exploring Statistics on Tourism, Migration, Population and Displacements by Using Mobile Positioning Data
• Towards 2030 Agenda: The Use of Mobile Data to Measure SDGs Indicators on Information Society

The Federal Statistical Office (FSO) of Switzerland together with the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) and Facebook are organizing a webinar on the topic of Data Science and Official Statistics. FSO recently established a Data Science Competence Centre which will benefit all government departments of Switzerland, while UNSD has been supporting the UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics since 2014. Facebook uses Data Science in developing market strategy, but also to support a large Open Source community, called PyTorch, which has developed a machine learning framework that accelerates the path from research prototyping to production deployment.

The NCSI Oman has accomplished a major achievement by using mobile positioning data for official statistics and making it one of the important data sources for the measurement of tourism, population, and commuting in the Sultanate of Oman. The use of mobile positioning data allows to reduce the volume of field surveys, reduce frequent visits to families and companies to conduct field surveys, and increase the speed of response to the requirements of development plans. In addition, it can be used to cover new statistical areas that development plans may require. This achievement of using Big Data is a paradigm shift in the production processes of high-quality official indicators.

This Stats Café will present the experiences of the National Statistical Offices of Indonesia, Republic of Korea and Georgia in addressing challenges of using mobile phone data in population and tourism statistics. It will also discuss the supporting efforts of the UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics and the Task Team on Mobile Phone Data.

This side-event will showcase the competence framework on Big Data and data science and the related maturity matrix for statistical offices, the training program on Earth observations for agriculture statistics and the training courses on privacy preserving techniques. The objective is to convey the message that training in Big Data and data science is being developed and is available and open to all the members of the Commission.

In the context of the Global Working Group on Big Data and its Task Team on Big Data for the SDGs in particular, the purpose of this side-event is to share status of the current work on monitoring the SDGs with the help of non-traditional data, including big data sources such as Earth observations and citizen generated data. The aim of the side event is to provide inspiration and knowledge exchange for countries wishing to exploit big data for their SDG reporting.

This side-event of the 52nd UN Statistical Commission will showcase the projects on Sen2Agri, AIS data and .STAT. The objective is to convey the message that the data, services, technology and applications on the platform are available and open to all the members of the Commission. More projects can be onboarded. The side event will be conducted virtually and showcase 3 presentations with Q&A.

The UN Global Working Group (GWG) on Big Data for Official Statistics annual plenary meeting.

The UN Global Working Group (GWG) on Big Data for Official Statistics will conduct a webinar jointly with the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) of Switzerland on the topic of data innovation in official statistics. FSO has taken the initiative to include data science into the portfolio of its work. This will be for the benefit not only of the Federal Statistical Office but also of other government departments. The GWG just conducted a Hackathon in the use of AIS data on the UN Global Platform. AIS is real-time data which tracks the position of ships around the world, and the UN Global Platform is a cloud-based collaborative environment for the GWG community of statisticians and data scientists. During the Hackathon 17 teams used AIS data to develop new applications, which can help in the COVID-19 response or in Climate Action. The winner and runner-up of this contest will present their application during this webinar.

Automatic identification system (AIS) data allows for real-time geo-tracking and identification for equipped vessels. AIS data provides a big data source of unrivaled quality. The number of possible applications for this data is enormous. To quickly utilize the data to its full potential, we need a surge of creative researchers to come up with equally creative ways to use it!

The symposium aims to increase the knowledge and skills of statistical offices in using new data source, tools and methods, and to foster collaboration among countries in the Asian-Pacific region in the use of Big Data for official statistics. The symposium will give an overview on the work of the GWG and its Task Teams. Special attention will be devoted to the UN Global Platform as a digital platform enabling international and regional collaboration. This platform enables statisticians, data scientists and other researchers from different countries and locations to work together on projects involving, for example, satellite data to estimate crop production.

The UN-China Centre on Big Data is being set up as a regional hub of the UN Global Platform, giving countries in Asia a better opportunity to advance the work on Big Data. This Centre will be useful to initiate and execute innovative data projects. The Centre will also serve as a training institute to develop new skills for staff of national statistical offices.

Big Data is by definition different from traditional data sources currently used by national statistical systems (NSSs) requiring the development of new methodologies together with upgrading of quality assurance framework, technology, security, privacy and legal matters. This means that new skill sets and competencies are necessary. Some of which could be hired temporarily, others will need to become an integral part of the institution. Data science is one of those new competencies. It is likely that the staffing table of statistical institutions will show quite a few data scientists and data engineers in the near future.

This symposium offers insights into activities on the nexus of Data Science and Official Statistics and corresponding training opportunities. It will consist of lectures, project presentations and hands-on demonstrations.

Big Data is by definition different from traditional data sources currently used by national statistical systems (NSSs) requiring the development of new methodologies together with upgrading of quality assurance framework, technology, security, privacy and legal matters. This means that new skill sets and competencies are necessary. Some of which could be hired temporarily, others will need to become an integral part of the institution. Data science is one of those new competencies. It is likely that the staffing table of statistical institutions will show quite a few data scientists and data engineers in the near future.

This symposium offers insights into activities on the nexus of Data Science and Official Statistics and corresponding training opportunities. It will consist of lectures, project presentations and hands-on demonstrations.

The 5th International Conference on Big Data for official statistics will be held in Kigali, Rwanda from 29 April until 3 May 2019. The first 3 days of the week will be devoted to training workshops for African countries and a seminar of activities of a Data Science Campus for official statistics. The seminar will demonstrate projects for the African continent, including projects on Digital Earth Africa. The last 2 days of the week will be for keynote speakers and several high-level panels. This week in Kigali will show that new data sources and new technologies can also be used in Africa to get better data for better policies.

This year the GWG will meet the day before the 2nd UN World Data Forum. The GWG grasps the occasion to demonstrate its work to a wider audience. The GWG will show the progress made on the Global Platform – thanks to the great efforts made by ONS, UK – as a collaborative research and development environment for trusted data, services and applications by demonstrating [on the Global Platform] a number of projects in partnership with technology companies, data providers and academia. This Open Day of the GWG is an opportunity to show to all stakeholders where the GWG stands with the development of the Global Platform.

On 20-22 October 2015, the second global conference on Big Data for official statistics took place in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. This conference intends to take the development of Big Data one step further. Thus far, many examples of Big Data projects have been demonstrated. Now, the focus will be on lessons learned on the basis of detailed descriptions of those case studies. This is a first step towards guidance on using Big Data for Official Statistics, which can stimulate training, pilot projects and bringing pilot projects into the production environment. Therefore, the theme of the second global conference is 'moving from examples to guidelines'.