United Nations Statistical Commission

Background

The Federated Information System for the Sustainable Development Goals¹ (FIS4SDGs), is an initiative led by DESA's Statistics Division, in partnership with Esri, that leverages state-of-the-art web technologies and services to improve the integration, accessibility and usability of official statistics, geospatial information, and other sources of data, including from outside the official statistical system, to support decision makers at the local, national, regional and global levels in achieving the 2030 Agenda.

The FIS4SDGs creates an enabling environment for the national and international reporting and the integration and analysis of SDG data and statistics across a system of federated data hubs, thus strengthening the capacity of national statistical and geospatial information systems to respond to the data needs of decision and policy makers, and their international partners, at the country level.

The FIS4SDGs initiative is based on the principle of national ownership, where the National Statistical System implements internationally agreed standards around the production and dissemination of data and statistics, in line with country-specific priorities and ongoing capacity building efforts.

The federated architecture supports an interoperable data ecosystem whereby independent global and national SDG Data Hubs can publish and share with each other, authoritative SDG data and information on a common platform, enabling users to not only access the data they need when they need it, but also ensure the traceability and accountability of the data, which is maintained at its source.

Each national data hub, which is country owned and country led, contains geospatially enabled datasets pertaining to specific SDG indicators, as well as interactive analytical visualization and communication applications, such Story Maps, which allow users to present actionable insights from multiple data layers in an engaging and user-friendly manner.

Now endorsed by the Statistical Commission² and the United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management³, the FIS4SDGs started as a research exercise in 2015. Today, it is now scaling to more countries globally, enabling the data management for the SDGs and supporting analysis and decision making in thematic areas such as gender, policy⁴, and information dissemination⁵ among many other contributory factors that support the attainment of the 2030 Agenda.

Outcomes

This side event will provide examples of how the FIS4SDGs is supporting decision makers national and regional levels, in enabling actionable, policy-relevant and ready-to-use data, information and insights are able to be readily generated by national statistical and geospatial systems. Following this scene setting, a formative discussion will take place and formulate the next steps for bringing the FIS4SDGs to scale.

Agenda



1. Opening remarks
2. UNSD
   Esri
   


3. Where we stand? Showcasing FIS4SDGs solutions
4. United Arab Emirates - Presentation of UAE's National SDG Data Hub and initiatives
   
5. TBC - Collaborative data analysis and communication: The Gender Story Map initiative
   
6. Ireland - Regional SDGs Ireland 2017: A geospatially-enabled platform to report on Ireland's UN-SDG indicators
   
7. UNSD - Interactive applications to disseminate and visualize data from the UNSD Data Hub
   


8. Next steps and scaling the FIS4SDGs
9. Facilitated Discussion, Q&A