Nepal
I. General on SDG monitoring set up
National SDG organizational set up
At the top level, a Steering Committee for the implementation and monitoring of the SDGs has been established, chaired by the Prime Minister. Under the Steering Committee, is the SDG Implementation and Monitoring Committee, which is under the Steering Committee and is chaired by the Vice-Chair of the NPC (National Planning Commission). This contains all members of the NPC as well as the Secretaries of all ministries relating to the SDGs. It provides guidelines to the federal ministries for implementing and mainstreaming the SDGs at provincial and local levels. It also monitors implementation and prepares the status of progress.
Provincial-level steering committees coordinate and facilitate the implementation of the SDGs in the provinces.
National set of SDG indicators
The SDG Status and Roadmap report of the NPC recognised that some of the global SDG indicators are less relevant for Nepal while additional indicators are necessary to address country specific challenges. The report therefore proposed a preliminary list of 415 indicators to better reflect the national context for the monitoring and evaluation of the SDGs against a global total of 232 indicators. After consultations and engagement with province level SDG stakeholders, the NPC came up with a total of 494 indicators.
SDG reports and Voluntary National Reviews
Nepal submitted its second Voluntary National Review and presented it at the High-Level Political Forum in New York in July 2020, following an initial VNR in 2017.
As part of the process, a series of consultations with key stake- holders were undertaken in a virtual setting in view of the COVID-19 lockdown. Key government officials from the concerned line ministries were consulted on the efforts of the government towards the implementation of the SDGs. Similarly, consultations were held with parliamentarians, and representatives of provinces and local levels. Discussions were also held with other groups, including representatives of the private sector, cooperative sector, multilateral organisations and development partners.
Not yet available
The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) is planning to use the Open SDG platform developed by the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS), US government, the non-profit Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE) and members of the Open SDG community.
The national SDG platform for Nepal will be launched in the first half of 2021.
Overall coordination of National Statistical System
The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) was established in 1959 as the central agency for the collection, consolidation, processing, analysis, publication and dissemination of statistics. It is under the National Planning Commission (NPC) of Nepal and serves as a national statistical organization of Government of Nepal. It generates timely and reliable socio-economic statistics mainly through the operation of censuses and surveys. It promotes collaborative research efforts among members of academic community, data producers and users and has a prominent role in developing statistical system and maintaining statistical standard in the country.
The broader National Statistical System is coordinated by the National Statistical Council (NSC), which was established in 1988 in order to 1) develop an Integrated Statistical System by formulating short term and long term Statistical Plans and policies and implementing them so as to ensure the availability of relevant, reliable and high quality data.; 2) bring about co-ordination among all the governmental and non -governmental organization that conduct economic and social data collection, processing analysis and publication activities., and 3) develop a standardized statistical system. The latest National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS) was published in 2019.
Responsibility for SDG indicator compilation
Multiple agencies within the NSS in Nepal are responsible for the compilation of SDG indicators. The NSDS sets out that that arrangements will be made for CBS to act as the nodal data producing agency for coordinating with national and international stakeholders concerned to measure progress on national development goals and SDGs.
A new statistics act is in the process of enactment, to go alongside the National Statistical Development Strategy. This is expected to further promote quality, timely and disaggregated data collection in future.
As part of the UNSD-FCDO project, UNSD provided remote training to CBS and other parts of the NSS on the compilation of metadata using the internationally agreed reporting template for both global and national metadata. In addition, CBS is also planning to organise a national metadata workshop to support NSS partners in the development of their SDG metadata. During the first half of 2021, with the support of the project, CBS intends to work with NSS partners to develop the national metadata in order to produce a published metadata handbook for the SDGs.
With support from the UNSD-FCDO project, CBS will be developing, adopting and starting to implement a user engagement strategy linked to SDG monitoring during the first half of 2021.
Implementation plan and activities
Proposed activities under the user engagement strategy include a user workshop to identify the key user needs, a user engagement seminar and the production of advocacy materials. Data literacy training is also planned for national policy makers and the media.