IGF 2020 WS #207 Ensuring Trusted Data Sharing for Monitorining the SDGs

Relevance to Internet Governance: This proposal is relevant in the sense that this workshop will be an excellent opportunity to engage key stakeholders – governments, data producers and the private sector – to debate innovation on data production through trusted data sharing; on how on how to create public value from data, and on how to promote institutional innovation (including partnerships, governance, legislation, privacy and ethics agreements, and stakeholder’s engagement). Besides, it will bring to the table researchers, policy-makers and international organizations from all regions of the word to debate data governance.

Relevance to Theme: Countries still face major gaps in the production of official and timely data for monitoring the SDGs. Many international organizations acknowledge the substantial contribution of Information and communication technologies (ICTs) both in achieving the 2030 Agenda and in measuring its progress. Therefore, new sources of data and statistics production will be crucial for tracking the progress towards the objectives set out in this Agenda. Traditional official data producers may not be able to provide timely, reliable, well-disaggregated data that meet policy design and monitoring needs. Therefore, a new model for a data production ecosystem that includes new data providers and new data sharing opportunities must be discussed. The debate on how to build a comprehensive data production model that incorporates different data sources and data sharing mechanisms to meet policy data needs is urgently needed. We are living a veritable data revolution – data is currently produced by a myriad of stakeholders, mainly from the private sector, faster than it can be used and transformed into information that can drive sustainable development. Official data producers will increasingly depend on their capacity to partner with these stakeholders to develop and disseminate information and knowledge to promote development. In this context, on the one hand, policymakers increasingly require official data producers, e.g. national statistical systems, to produce high-quality data in a timely manner to monitor progress towards sustainable development goals. On the other hand, a wide range of data providers from both public and private sector must work in collaboration to produce relevant and timely data for monitoring progress towards the SDGs. Enormous amounts of data available at ever-increasing rates, new data sources, and institutional arrangements will reshape the production of statistics. Big data, along with traditional sources such as administrative and survey data, has emerged as a promising paradigm. This session addresses the key opportunities, challenges and alternatives for data governance arising of such new model of public statistics production, so that to ensure trusted data sharing and use for development.