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Measuring and evaluation of UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development to Tanzania and Zanzibar, June 29 - July 6, 2017.

12 July 2017

UNCTAD delivers technical training on measuring and evaluation of UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development to Tanzania and Zanzibar, June 29 - July 6, 2017. Statisticians and evaluators from UNCTAD ran a series of seminars and technical workshops in Tanzania and Zanzibar.

This capacity building was delivered as part of the Global initiative 'Delivering Results Together' under the auspices of United Nations Development Group (UNDG). From a statistical perspective the monitoring framework for the UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will pose a very significant technical and coordination challenge for countries, their national statistical systems and their broader data ecosystems. The complexity and ambition of this challenge led Mogens Lykketoft, President of the UN General Assembly to describe it as an 'unprecedented statistical challenge'. The challenge for evaluation will be no less.

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Cecilia Tinonin; Steve MacFeely; Anton Sudzik

 

The seminars focused on broad strategic issues, such as, how to achieve a sustainable balance between fulfilling the informational needs to support national policy priorities and countries global responsibilities. Discussions included how national data needs and SDG indicator requirements might be aligned in a symbiotic way, so that information needs, not just for performance indicators, but also the input data required to support policy formulation and the data needed to properly evaluate the success of national development plans might be married or coordinated.

The seminars also addressed other practical issues, such as within country coordination, and between respective Tanzanian and Zanzibarian statistical systems, and with the United Nations, all of which will pose new challenges as many of the targets (and consequent indicators) fall well outside the scope of traditional official statistics and thus are not guided by agreed international measurement standards.

Image data security
Image data security
Image data security
Image data security

Others questions discussed included the approach of Tanzanian and Zanzibarian statistical authorities to Tier II and Tier III indicators and what steps they can take to find common approaches to quality assurance and adherence to international standards.

The technical workshops were designed to improve the technical capacities of subject matter experts. These workshops focused on a number of cross-cutting topics, such as, data analyses, data visualization and monitoring & evaluation. There were also very specific sessions on how to compile national and SDG trade and trade-related indicators.

Over the course of 4 days, 116 participants took part. For the seminar sessions, 72% of participants stated their expectations were met, with the remaining 28% saying their expectations were exceeded. For the technical workshops, the feedback was more mixed, with many participants stating that they would have preferred longer workshops and they would have preferred if they could have attended all workshops i.e. they would prefer sequential rather than parallel sessions.

Tanzania​​Zanzibar​Total
​Seminars​2634​​60
​Workshops​27​29​56
Total​​53​63​116

As a result, 16% of participants stated that their expectations had been exceeded, 74% said their expectations had been met, 5% were not sure and another 5% stating that their expectations had not been met.