A ring to bind them all? Co-ordination in development needs to become more pragmatic.

“The 2030 Agenda has led to a proliferation of international and national development actors who are all eager to help developing countries adjust their development policies and projects to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This good intention comes at an increasingly high cost for countries, as they need to balance their own needs with the specific agendas and ways of working of their old and new partners. A frequently proposed solution is “more co-ordination” through dialogue, co-ordination meetings and other means; however, progress on co-operation will remain modest until we can find a “master ring” that can bind all development actors together.”

Huffpost (blog by Johannes Jütting)

The imperative for national statistical agency

“Against the backdrop of the above, it is imperative to depoliticise the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics and convert this to an independent National Statistical Agency (NSA) that is professionally managed. It should be headed by an internationally trained professional statistician who would become the nation's Chief Statistical Officer (CSO).  It should be staffed by professional statisticians, economists and ICT specialists who have a solid understanding of social and economic database. (…) As Bangladesh moves forward with the challenge of achieving upper middle-income status, it must reform its core institutions. The reform of BBS is one such institutional reform.”

The Financial Express (Bangladesh)

Statistical Gaps Hampering Africa's Development Says ECA Official

“Mr. Armah said national statistics offices across the continent require stronger capacity to gather and analyse data on socio-economic issues, including demographic profiles; generate data for baselines and to continuously analyse impacts of different macro-economic and micro-economic policies on trends in poverty and inequality, education, health, labour and social protection.”

All Africa

Sokoto State Govt pays N600M counterpart fund for SDGs projects

“Sokoto State Government said on Saturday that it has paid N600 million counterpart fund for the project execution under the tripartite Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 2017 Government Track. (…) He added that N 5.4million was also spent on data generation and production of State Statistical Year Book, 2016.”

Pulse Nigeria

Innovative financing needed to counter stalled SDG progress

“Innovative sources of financing are necessary to advance stalled progress on eradicating global poverty by 2030, United Nations ambassadors said Tuesday, cautioning that governments alone do not have the required funds to meet the Sustainable Development Goals on poverty, health, environment and justice.”

Devex

Monitoring Initiatives to Fill Data Gaps, Track Progress on Forest-Related Commitments

“The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and partners developed a knowledge-sharing platform that will provide access to a comprehensive database of key forest and landscape restoration resources from around the globe. The first section of the platform, a monitoring module, includes tools, methodologies and guidelines to assess the progress and success of forest and landscape restoration efforts, aiming to help users improve organizational and technical capacities when designing, planning and implementing restoration programmes.”

IISD

Defunding statistical agencies poses risks to economies and public knowledge

“Around the globe, governments defunding statistical agencies has led to staffing decreases and created tough choices for statisticians. (…) For NSOs, the pressing issue is how budget cuts are implemented, said Durr, who also was the former chief demographer for the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the clearinghouse for global data. “When it is at a slow pace and well announced, they try to improve their productivity to absorb the diminution of funds,” he wrote. “That is the case in many developed countries. However, in case of a sudden and large cut … it’s more complicated and can lead to suppression of operations (surveys for example or other data collection).” “

Sunlight Foundation

Foreign Aid Keeps Americans Safe

“[Foreign aid] programs give American taxpayers a phenomenal return on investment, one of the best anywhere in government. They do this in three ways:

-  Making Americans safer and the world more stable

-  Creating jobs at home and promote trading partners that will buy American goods

-  Saving lives and building up health systems so other countries can take better care of their people

Together these three points make what you might call the strategic case for aid—the argument that aid helps the countries that give it as well as those that receive it.”

Bill Gates Notes

Argentina’s new, honest inflation statistics

“Five years ago we stopped publishing the inflation figure for Argentina produced by the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner because we, and many others, thought it was bogus. We substituted an inflation number drawn up by PriceStats, an international data service. A year later the IMF followed our lead, formally censuring Argentina for “inaccuracy” in its data. This week we are delighted to resume publication of the official inflation number for Argentina. One of the first things that Mauricio Macri did after he was elected as the country’s president in November 2015, defeating Ms Fernández’s candidate, was to restore the professional independence of INDEC, the statistical office.”

The Economist

Stats breakdown: Real Madrid v Juventus

UEFA

Experts Group Meeting on the Agenda 2063/SDGs Trends Report 2017

30 May – 1^st June, Victoria, Seychelles

UN Conference in Support of the Implementation of SDG14

5 – 9 June, New York, USA