National reporting platforms


National Platforms

Since the decision was made to discontinue support for Devinfo, the most common reporting platform for the MDGs, UNSD and partners have worked to find alternative solutions. A Conference on National Reporting and Dissemination Platforms, hosted by UNSD, led to much useful exchange of experiences. Partially based on the principles and guidelines agreed at the conference and further assessments, UNSD developed a strategy for the implementation of national platforms, which was shared with countries. The recommended approach has been to determine the technical solutions separately for the front-end and the back-end of the platform:

  • Front-end is what the user sees and what to a large extent defines the user experience. The usability of national platforms, as well as user engagement, would greatly benefit from a customized SDG interface rather than a generic data warehouse. A modern front end is typically a Web application driven by an Application Programming Interface (API).
  • Back-end is a system that supplies the API and data, and includes data entry, processing and validation modules over, typically, a relational database (or another type of storage).

The project countries chose different solutions depending on their specific circumstances, needs and preferences. Many countries selected off-the-shelf front-end and/or back-end solutions, such as Open SDG, AfDB's ODP, ArcGIS, .Stat and PxWeb, though others have chosen to develop home-grown platforms. UNSD has worked closely with partner organisations to support the development and maintenance of the national platforms.

Almost all project countries have now launched their national platforms, with the screenshots to the right illustrating a few examples. Links to all the platforms are available from the country pages of the project website. Last year, UNSD hosted a webinar targeted towards non-project countries which provided guidance on developing national platforms, including sharing the experiences of some of the project countries.


Global SDG data platform

The new Global SDG Indicators Data Platform was launched in September 2021. The platform includes a new and user-friendly interface to the Global Sustainable Development Goal Indicators Database where SDG indicator data can be easily searched and downloaded (as table and in bulk).

The platform also provides access to the SDG Country Profiles where - with a single click - trends for individual countries across the SDG goals are being shown.

The entirely new SDG Analytics allows the interactive analysis of data availability, to review global and regional trends for individual indicators (data series) and to compare trends for countries and areas and for different indicators (data series).

In addition, the new Global SDG Indicators Data Platform includes a menu of Advanced Access options and convenient links to authoritative SDG indicator information and important additional resources.