Launched in October 2021 at the UN World Data Forum in Bern, the Clearinghouse for Financing Development Data is a free online platform that recipients of development finance, donors and others can use to analyse data financing flows, identify funding gaps, access data on over 15,000 projects, and connect to new communities of experts. The platform aims to close the stark data financing gap that is preventing progress towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The platform, developed by the Bern Network on Financing Data for Development, a multi-stakeholder alliance created in 2019 by the Swiss Government to promote more and better funding of development data, is intended as a mechanism to mobilise the global community into action towards achieving the SDGs. According to the PARIS21 2020 Partner Report on Support to Statistics, two-thirds of national statistical offices urgently need more funding to provide life-saving data amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The clearinghouse has the potential to go further by putting quality, timely, granular information at the fingertips of decision-makers,” said Patricia Danzi, Director General of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development calls on countries to produce, collect and use timely, quality and disaggregated data to ensure that no one is left behind. Yet, while progress has been made, data gaps persist among many low and middle-income countries, who need more resources and technical assistance to modernise their national statistical systems.
A rapid and sustained scaling-up of domestic resource mobilisation is essential, and so is a more harmonised and efficient approach to external aid if countries are to develop statistical systems fit for sustainable development.
According to Johannes Jütting, Executive Head of PARIS21, “We can realise huge efficiency gains in financing for development data without spending any more money simply by ensuring that financing flows go to where they are most needed, and where they align with the priorities of aid recipient countries. The clearinghouse makes this possible.”
The clearinghouse is one of a number of key, complementary solutions that are being launched in 2021 to scale up support for data and statistics priorities to deliver Agenda 2030. It will help provide a mechanism for aid effectiveness and transparency to initiatives like the World Bank’s Global Data Facility as well as to commitments made at the Generation Equality Forum to close gender data gaps.
“Achieving the SDGs will only be possible with more and better data. Together, the World Bank’s new Global Data Facility and the clearinghouse have the potential to bring about a step-change in terms of the scale, coordination, transparency and efficiency of development data financing”, said Haishan Fu, Director of the World Bank’s Development Data Group.
The clearinghouse was developed by PARIS21 in its capacity as secretariat of the Bern Network, together with Open Data Watch. The UN Statistical Division, Data2X, GPSDD and the Development Assistance Community Data Group provided significant input.