Promote Implementation of SDGs (US0093)

In September 2015, world leaders including President Obama adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the successor framework to the Millennium Development Goals, which set out a vision and priorities for global development for the next 15 years. The Administration is committed to ensuring that efforts to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are open, transparent, and undertaken in partnership and consultation with civil society. With the inclusion of Goal 16, promoting peaceful and inclusive societies and access to justice, this new set of global goals recognizes the foundational role of transparent, accountable institutions for global development. Consistent with the 2015 Joint Declaration on Open Government for the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, this National Action Plan includes commitments to harness open government and promote progress toward the SDGs both in the United States and globally, including in the areas of education, health, climate resilience, air quality, food security, science and innovation, justice, and law enforcement. Building on these efforts, the United States will continue to work alongside the partner governments, and private foundations, civil society organizations, private sector companies, and multilateral partners on next steps for the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, a group of like-minded actors committed to creating and using data to support progress toward the SDGs. The United States will also convene interagency stakeholders and consult with civil society to take stock of existing U.S. government data that relates to each of the 17 SDGs, and to propose a strategy for tracking progress toward achieving the SDGs in the United States.

For details of these commitments, see the report: https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/united-states-mid-term-report-2015-2017/

Commitment 41. Open and Accountable Implementation of the SDGs

Commitment Text:

Promote Open and Accountable Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals

In September 2015, world leaders including President Obama adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the successor framework to the Millennium Development Goals, which set out a vision and priorities for global development for the next 15 years. The Administration is committed to ensuring that efforts to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are open, transparent, and undertaken in partnership and consultation with civil society. With the inclusion of Goal 16, promoting peaceful and inclusive societies and access to justice, this new set of global goals recognizes the foundational role of transparent, accountable institutions for global development. Consistent with the 2015 Joint Declaration on Open Government for the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, this National Action Plan includes commitments to harness open government and promote progress toward the SDGs both in the United States and globally, including in the areas of education, health, climate resilience, air quality, food security, science and innovation, justice, and law enforcement. Building on these efforts, the United States will continue to work alongside the partner governments, and private foundations, civil society organizations, private sector companies, and multilateral partners on next steps for the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, a group of like-minded actors committed to creating and using data to support progress toward the SDGs. The United States will also convene interagency stakeholders and consult with civil society to take stock of existing U.S. government data that relates to each of the 17 SDGs, and to propose a strategy for tracking progress toward achieving the SDGs in the United States.

Responsible Institutions: Office of Management and Budget (OMB), General Services Administration (GSA), Millenium Challenge Corporation (MCC), Department of State, United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

Supporting Institutions: Federal agencies, private foundations, civil society stakeholders, private sector companies, and multilateral partners

Start Date: Not Specified  End Date: Not Specified

Commitment Aim

This commitment aimed for the US government to support next steps for the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, [552] an initiative that looks to leverage data to help meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). [553] The United States also sought to inventory existing datasets that are relevant for the SDGs in conjunction with inputs from interagency stakeholders and civil society, and propose a strategy to track progress toward their achievement in the UNITED STATES.

Status

Midterm: Substantial

At the midterm, the government had made substantial progress on this commitment. The United States became a founding member of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data in September 2015, [554] with the US State Department and the Millennium Challenge Corporation working to support several related initiatives under the Global Partnership’s umbrella, specifically in Tanzania. [555] With respect to taking inventory of US SDG-relevant data, the US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) solicited input from federal agencies as a first step toward completing this activity, with subsequent plans to confer with civil society groups and store SDG-relevant data in an open source, public-facing national SDG reporting platform, anticipated to launch in fall 2016. [556]

End of term: Substantial

At the end of term, progress on this commitment remains substantial. In September 2016, The US Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the US Department of State’s Office of International Organizations, the US General Services Administration, and the US Office of Science and Technology Policy launched an online national SDG-reporting platform, referred to as the “US National Statistics for the UN Sustainable Development Goals.” [557] The platform’s homepage contains a clickable list of SDG indicators, which in turn link to available data for the selected indicator.

The data available on the platform at the time of writing was sparse with respect to indicator and temporal coverage. For example, data is lacking entirely for various indicators, while temporal coverage for many indicators is not continuous. A note on the platform’s webpage suggests this is because the US government’s efforts to inventory SDG-relevant data remain incomplete. Specifically, the webpage notes that by spring 2017, the platform “will provide a dashboard summarizing the US status of data discovery, statistical production, and national reporting of statistics for the Sustainable Development Goals’ global indicators.” However, by the close of the end-of-term reporting period, the dashboard was not yet publicly available on the platform.

Progress on the platform will likely remain ongoing for a substantial period of time in light of the challenges the government faces in obtaining data on the SDG’s 169 indicators spread across 17 goals. As described in a January 2017 Roundtable Report by the Center for Open Data Enterprise and the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, as of May 2016, exploratory efforts by the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of the Chief Statistician assessed that the United States lacked data for roughly half of the SDG indicators. [558] Beyond these data challenges, the US government has also not publicly released an explicit strategy for tracking progress toward meeting the SDGs. Thus, while the government made substantial progress by the close of the end-of-term reporting period, several aspects of the commitment remain incomplete.

As for engagement with civil society, the government met with civil society stakeholders to propose recommendations for better data tracking. Specifically, on 14 December 2016, the Center for Open Data Enterprise and the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data convened a roundtable that included more than 40 stakeholders from the government, civil society, and the business sector. [559] The goal of the meeting was to strengthen the US SDG-reporting platform, use data for action, and support global efforts to achieve the SDGs. While this meeting took place more explicitly under the framework of Commitment 48. Harness the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development, there are many similarities between the two commitments, which both focus on improving the reporting of progress on SDGs and engaging with civil society stakeholders. For more details about this engagement, please see this report’s analysis of Commitment 48.

Did It Open Government?

Access to Information: Marginal

Civic Participation: Marginal

This commitment marginally opened government with respect to access to information and civic participation. While the national SDG-reporting platform offers a forward-looking tool to tracking progress on SDGs, a more substantial opening of government is mitigated by limited data availability and the lack of a live-data dashboard at the time of writing, as explained in the section above. Specifically, by the end of term, the lack of data for many indicators and non-continuous data coverage are barriers to greater data usage. As for civic participation, the roundtable convened by the Center for Open Data Enterprise and the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data represented a clear effort to include civil society in the development of an SDG-data strategy. However, a more institutionalized and regular channel of engagement would be needed to achieve a major improvement on this front.

Carried Forward?

At the time of writing, the US government had not published its fourth national action plan, so it is unclear if this commitment will be carried forward. The United States should nevertheless continue its efforts to inventory data that is relevant for tracking US progress on the SDGs, with data posted to the national reporting platform as it becomes available. The government should also release an explicit strategy for tracking progress toward meeting the SDG goals in the United States in order to maximize usage of the platform’s data on an ongoing basis.

[552] Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. “Homepage.” http://www.data4sdgs.org/. Consulted 9 October 2017.

[553] United Nations. “Sustainable Development Goals.” http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/. Consulted 2 July 2017.

[554] U.S. State Department Office of the Spokesperson. “Press Release: Harnessing the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development: US Government Commitments and Collaboration with the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data.” Press Release 22 September 2015. https://2009-2017.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2015/09/247419.htm. Consulted 2 July 2017.

[555] Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. “Data Collaboratives for Local Impact.” http://www.data4sdgs.org/dc-data-collaboratives-for-local-impact/. Consulted 2 July 2017. For an overview of other DCLI programs, see Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. “Local Collaboratives.” http://www.data4sdgs.org/data-collabratives/. Consulted 2 July 2017.

[556] Open Government Partnership. “United States of America Midterm Self-Assessment Report for the Open Government Partnership: Third Open Government National Action Plan, 2015–2017,” pp.41-42. September 2016. The IRM researcher was unable to document OMB’s solicitation of stakeholder inputs for these activities on the basis of publicly available information.

[557] The platform is available at https://sdg.data.gov/. Consulted 22 September 2017. The launch date comes from Center for Open Data Enterprise and Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. “US SDG Sustainable Data Revolution Roadmap: Roundtable Report.” p.9.  http://reports.opendataenterprise.org/us-sdg-report.pdf. Consulted 22 September 2017.

[558] Ibid. p.8.

[559] Center for Open Data Enterprise and Global Parnership for Sustainable Development Data. “US SDG Data Revolution Roadmap, Roundtable Report,” January 2017, http://reports.opendataenterprise.org/us-sdg-report.pdf