The Friends of the Chair Group (FOC) on broader measures of progress was established by the United Nations Statistical Commission at its forty-fourth session (26 February to 1 March 2013) as a response to the request of the Rio+20 conference to launch a programme of work on broader measures of progress to complement GDP in order to better inform policy decisions.
The Commission requested the FOC among other things to “build a work programme to develop broader measures of progress”. The Commission stressed that
“’broader measures of progress’ have to be part of a larger information infrastructure/architecture in order to support development policy at all levels and need therefore to be linked to evolving sustainable development goals and any framework that will support the post-2015 development agenda”
and tasked the FOC to
“closely monitor the ongoing debate on development frameworks and to keep the Bureau of the Statistical Commission informed, undertaking an active dialogue with United Nations bodies and the policy sphere in order to ensure that a robust statistical measurement approach is incorporated from the outset in preparations for the post-2015 development agenda.”
The following 24 countries are members of the FOC on broader measures of progress: Argentina Australia, Bahamas, Botswana, Brazil, Cameroon, Germany, France, Hungary, India, Italy, Jamaica, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, United Kingdom, United States and Uganda. France and India lead the FOC on broader measures of progress as the two co-chairs.
The following organizations participate as observers: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Paris-21, European Union (through its Statistical Office Eurostat), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).
The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) acts as Secretariat of the FOC on broader measures of progress.