This session aims to provide an overview and introduction to the process by the global statistical community to address the new data requirements to fulfill the ambitions and principles of the 2030 sustainable development agenda. In the new agenda, Member States recognize the great importance of quality, accessible, timely and reliable disaggregated data that will be needed to inform policies and interventions and for the measurement of progress, ensuring that no one is left behind. The wide range of topics of the new agenda requires an unprecedented amount of data and will pose an enormous challenge especially in the developing countries.
In the face of these challenges, the global data community needs to identify ways to ensure the collection and use of high-quality, relevant, timely and disaggregated data. We are witnessing an exponential growth in data sources—from mobile phones to administrative records, from satellite imagery to citizen-generated data—and a continuous innovation in data technologies and methods. Today, policy makers and citizens alike have unprecedented opportunities to produce and utilize the information they need to make better decisions and improve people’s lives.
In this session, presentations will cover the process for the development of the SDG Indicator framework, including global, regional, national and thematic indicators and the establishment of national SDG platforms. The session will also discuss mechanisms to allow the integration of different data sources from both within and outside the official statistical system. Issues of interoperability, including open data and new data principles will also be reviewed.
Finally, the session will provide an overview of issues of capacity building to ensure that countries can address the new data needs, including the Cape Town Global Action Plan and other processes within the UN Statistical Commission.
Monitoring and promoting the SDGs through the (Big) Data revolution
Two years after their formal adoption, there is an urgent need to mobilize the “Data Revolution” in general, and its core component Big Data in particular, to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). What can and should be done to seed and support a virtuous data-enabled process of social transformation through innovation and inclusion – a transformation in which the SDGs are much more systematically monitored and promoted?
This overarching question raises two more. First, what is the theory of societal change explicitly or implicitly put forth by the strongest advocates of the SDGs? And how valid is that theory? In other words: what are we saying or selling about the causal impact of measurement and evidence more largely?
Second, how can the instrumental role of measurement—via greater transparency, accountability and efficiency — be magnified? Despite the hope that Big Data could help fill “data gaps” and perhaps even fix the “statistical tragedy” in the poorest countries, there is still no body of stable, scalable methodologies to ‘leverage’ Big Data to make a significant contribution to measuring the SDGs in the next decade. Why is that? Can this be changed and if so how?
These are some of the questions this session will seek to address in proposing a theoretical and methodological framework for monitoring and promoting the SDGs through the (Big) Data Revolution, based on the work and vision of Data-Pop Alliance.
Inequality is a global problem that requires global solutions. It is on the rise, with the richest 10% population earning up to 40% of total global income, and the poorest 10% between 2 and 7%. Beyond income, other forms of inequality, as the digital divide, are also relevant.
The first two parts of the course focus on income inequality. First, we analyze the SDG’s Goal 10, aimed at reducing inequalities within and among countries. We revise its targets and their associated indicators and reflect about their scope, which is wider than the traditional economic focus. Second, we examine the available indicators of income distribution in Latin America and the way they are built to discuss their meaning and their reach critically.
The last part focuses on the digital divide, particularly on data regarding diffusion and use of ICTs in Latin America. Again, we critically discuss the information reported, with a specific interest in mobile communications and the Internet. We examine the evolution of the digital divide and the way the phenomenon has been conceptualized and measured, and the limitations of data availability when it comes to studying weaker social groups.
Quantitative reasoning on sustainable development indicators
The fourth day aims to provide an introductory overview of the main issues related to the quantitative analysis of sustainable development indicators. The constitution of large data sets of empirical measures in the different domains of sustainable development requires different quantitative and statistical techniques to create synthetic indexes as well as to study their relationships. The methodological questions will be illustrated from examples coming from sustainable development problems and research questions. Since the session is an introductory and overview one, it will not require previous statistical skills from participants.
This session will address the following issues in a non (too) technical approach but in an integrated perspective, underlying the links between the different issues and points: the logics of quantitative measures and indicators (from observations to data, from small data sets to big ones and their methodological issues), measurement issues (types of variables, levels of measurement, issues in aggregate-level measures versus individual-level ones, multi-level indicators), multivariate analysis of quantitative indicators (how the study the dimensionality of indicators and how to reduce it to create synthetic indicators? Describing and correlating indicators, data reduction techniques and their main objectives) and causal analysis (how to establish a relationship between X and Y? The relationships between socio-economic and socio-political indicators, from correlation and regression to causation).
Bruno Cautrès is a political scientist, attached to the CEVIPOF- Centre de recherches politiques de Sciences Po (Paris) at the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques in Paris. He is a senior CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, France) research fellow with interests and research domains in voting behaviour, political attitudes and behaviours, comparative and cross-national survey research and quantitative techniques. He is involved in European Social Survey, European Values Studies, International Social Survey Programme and European elections studies. He participates to the developments of the elections studies in France. Its current research programme concerns political trust and attitudes to democracy in France. He is teaching in different methods schools: the IPSA summer school in Sao Paulo and Singapore, the ECPR summer school in methods and techniques. He published papers and books in the field of election studies and attitudes of the citizens in Europe towards EU and globalisation.
Demi Getschko holds BSc, MSc, and PhD, degrees in Electronic Engineering from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. He is an advisor to the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br), CEO of the Brazilian Network Information Center (NIC.br) and an Associate Professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP). He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) by the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO).
In April 2014 he was an inductee at the Internet Hall of Fame under the category "Global Connectors", in a ceremony held in Hong Kong. In July of the same year, he was awarded with the “Cristina Tavares" prize of the Brazilian Computer Society. In December, on the day of the Engineer, he received from the Engineers Union, in the State of São Paulo, the "Personality of Technology 2014" award, under the category "Internet." In May 2016 he was admitted to the Order of Merit of Communications, at the "Officer s Degree" as a form of recognition of his services to Communications.
Emmanuel Letouzé is the Director and co-Founder of Data-Pop Alliance, a coalition on Big Data and development co-created in 2013 by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, MIT Media Lab, Overseas Development Institute, joined in 2016 by the Flowminder Foundation as its 4th core member. He is a Visiting Scholar at MIT Media Lab, a Research Affiliate at HHI and a Research Associate at ODI. He is the author of UN Global Pulse’s White Paper “Big Data for Development” (2012) and of the 2013 and 2014 OECD Fragiles States reports. His research and work focus on Big Data’s application and implications for official statistics, poverty and inequality, conflict, crime, and fragility, climate change, vulnerability and resilience, and human rights, ethics, and politics.
He holds a BA in Political Science and an MA in Economic Demography from Sciences Po Paris, an MA from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, where he was a Fulbright Fellow, and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
Ms Esperanza Magpantay is the Senior Statistician of the ICT Data and Statistics division (IDS) of the ITU, where she has been working since December 2000. She is responsible for the collection, harmonization and dissemination of ICT statistics particularly through the Yearbook of Statistics, World Telecom/ICT Indicators Database, ICT Eye and the ICT Development Index. Ms Magpantay coordinates the work of the ITU Expert Group on ICT Household Indicators (EGH) and the ITU’s representative at the Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development and its Steering Committee. She also coordinates the pilot project of the ITU on ‘Big Data for Measuring the Information Society’. Before joining ITU she worked for 7 years at the International Labour Office (ILO) in Geneva as a statistical officer. She has a degree in Statistics from the University of the Philippines.
Francesca Perucci is Assistant Director of the UN Statistics Division where she oversees the work on SDGs and other data and global monitoring initiatives.
Ms. Perucci has served in different positions within the UN system, where she has been an active leader in developing and promoting the use of statistics and indicators to inform development policies and to review and monitor progress and has pioneered new ways of analyzing and presenting data to reach a broad range of users.
She has authored a number of articles on social and gender statistics, two issues of the UN publication The World’s Women, and several statistical manuals on gender statistics and social statistics. She was the lead author of the MDG Report from 2005 to 2012 and now leads the preparation of the annual SDG report.
Guilherme Canela holds the position of UNESCO Montevideo Communication and Information Adviser for Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) and Chile. Currently, he is the Regional Coordinator of the UNESCO Initiative for the Promotion of Democracy and Freedom of Expression in judicial systems in Latin America. He is also Secretary to the Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Committee of the Memory of the World Programme of UNESCO, and focal point of the Organization for subjects related to the safety of journalists. He has a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Brasília (UnB) and a Master’s Degree on Political Science from the University of São Paulo (USP).
For 8 years, Guilherme coordinated the media and journalism research area of the News Agency for Children’s Rights (ANDI). In this period he was responsible for several surveys that evaluated the news media coverage on issues such as children’s education, rights, violence, health, sexual abuse, human and social development, drugs, participatory democracy, entrepreneurial social responsibility, human rights, among others.
Haroldo Machado Filho holds a PhD in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. He is a Senior Advisor at UNDP/Brazil and a negotiator of the Brazilian Government at United Nations Conferences on Climate Change since 1998. He is also lead author of the V Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - IPCC (Group III) and Arbitrator (nominated by the Brazilian Government) of the Panel of Environmental Experts at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, The Netherlands. He is also the focal point of UNDP Brazil on the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, and currently coordinates the Advisory Group of the United Nations System in Brazil on Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.
Marta Arretche is Vice-dean Assistant of Research at the University of São Paulo (USP), full professor at the Department of Political Science at USP, Director of the Center for Metropolis Studies and editor of the Brazilian Political Science Review. Ms. Arretche is a member of the Coordination of Special Programs of the Scientific Board of FAPESP. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, a Master's degree in Political Science from the State University of Campinas, a PhD in Social Sciences from the State University of Campinas and a postdoctoral degree from the Political Science Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was visiting fellow of the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute in Florence and is a researcher on Productivity at CNPq.
Her area of research is Institutional and Comparative Analysis, including comparative analysis of federative states and comparative analysis of social protection systems. More recently, she has been extensively dedicated to studies on inequality.
With a background on economics, Mireia Fernandez-Ardèvol holds a PhD from the University of Barcelona. She approaches research from a multidisciplinary point of view, combining quantitative and qualitative techniques. Mobile communication has been one of her main areas of study since 2003, with a combined sociological and economic focus. Her interests are set both in developed and in developing countries. She develops this interest from three different perspectives: the analysis of the contribution of mobile communication to development, poverty reduction and democratization processes – mostly focused in Latin America; the analysis of the relationship older people have with and through mobile communication technologies; and the analysis of the role of mobile technologies in networked social movements.
Paulo de Martino Jannuzzi is Professor of the National School of Statistical Sciences (ENCE) of Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), in Rio de Janeiro, and collaborating professor of the National School of Public Administration (ENAP), in Brasilia. He was Secretary of Evaluation and Information Management (SAGI) of the Ministry of Social Development and Fight against Hunger (MDS). He teaches and researches subjects on Official Statistics, Monitoring and Evaluation of Public Policies.
