A Matter of Trust

by Anne Thurston

Description The United Nations Sustainable Development Goalsinitiative has the potential to set the direction for a future world that worksfor everyone.  Approved by 193 United Nations member countries in September 2016 to helpguide global and nationaldevelopment policies in the period to 2030, the 17 goals build on the successes of theMillennium Development Goals, but also include new priority areas, such asclimate change, economic inequality, innovation, sustainable consumption, peaceand justice.  Assessed against commonagreed targets and indicators, the goals should facilitate inter-governmentalcooperation and the development of regional and even global development strategies. However, each goal presents considerablechallenges in terms of collecting and analysing relevant data and producing thestatistics needed to measure progress.  Mostgovernments in lower resourced countries simply do not yet have the systems andcontrols in place to produce high quality, reliable data and statistics, and itis questionable whether the quality and integrity of the available information isadequate to support meaningful decisions and set direction for the future.There are substantial implications:  where progress cannot be measured accurately becauseof inadequate or flawed statistics, the result can be misguided decisions, doubtsabout achievement of the goals and significant wasted resources.  Getting statistics 'right' depends upon thequality and integrity of the data used to produce them and on  the quality of the processes for collecting,manipulating and analysing the data.  Withouta documentary records as evidence of how the data were gathered and analysed orhow statistics were produced and disseminated, it is not  possible to confirm that the statistics arecomplete, accurate and relevant.   Various global organisations do recognise the importanceof high quality data and statistics for measuring the SDG indicators reliably, butthere has been little attention to the role of records in providing the evidenceneeded to trust the data and statistics. There is, moreover, a lack ofawareness that digital information simply will not survive without policies andprocedures to manage and preserve it through time.  As a result, digitaldata, statistics and records are being lost regularly on a large scale,particularly in lower resource countries, where the structures needed to protectand preserve them are not  yet inplace.   This book explores, through a series ofcase studies, the substantial challenges for assembling reliable data andstatistics to address pressing development challenges,  particularly in Africa. Hopefully, by highlightingthe enormous potential value of creating and using high quality data,statistics and records as an interconnected resource and describing how thiscan be achieved, the book will contribute to  defining meaningful and realistic global andnational development policies in the critical period to 2030.