The national platform for submitting statistical reports on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Belarus will be upgraded for the regional level, as reported to BelTA correspondent by Elena Kukharevich, Deputy Chairperson of the National Statistical Committee and Head of the Interdepartmental Working Group on Monitoring and Evaluating SDG Achievement.
The national platform for submitting statistical reports on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Belarus will be upgraded for the regional level, as reported to BelTA correspondent by Elena Kukharevich, Deputy Chairperson of the National Statistical Committee and Head of the Interdepartmental Working Group on Monitoring and Evaluating SDG Achievement.
The national platform serves as a unified centre for collecting and summarising up-to-date information on the current situation regarding SDG achievement, as well as for preparing national reports. It is an information resource for monitoring the fulfilment of international obligations (and consequently, determining Belarus's position in global rankings) and engaging society in sustainable development issues. Furthermore, the platform will enable government bodies and the administration to make management decisions. This resource, in its current version, is available on the Belstat website.
"Further work includes upgrading the national platform for the regional level. Thus, the result of the ongoing work on localising the SDGs in the country has been the formation of regional lists of indicators. These reflect national priorities, as well as the specific development characteristics of each particular region. Data for these indicators will also be posted on the platform," explained Elena Kukharevich. She identified enhancing statistical capacity in monitoring to address data gaps as the second important area.
The national list of SDG monitoring indicators forms the basis of the platform, comprising 255 indicators. Of these, 140 fully align with global indicators (established for the entire world), 20 indicators are calculated by international organisations, and 95 are proxy indicators (methodological approaches are not yet available at the international level for 41 indicators, while the remaining ones were determined by Belarusian government bodies in accordance with development priorities).
A total of 26 government bodies and organizations are responsible for the production of data on national list indicators. The platform provides them with the opportunity to choose the most convenient way of submitting information. Integration with existing state information resources and data systems is also envisaged, with their automatic upload to the platform.
As of today, 188 indicators are already available on the platform (posted on the Belstat website). "This is 75% of the indicators selected as relevant for the country, which is a fairly high level of data availability," emphasized the Deputy Head of Belstat.
"Another important task that the platform addresses is ensuring interaction with international organizations. Often, the information they require is used from various sources, which leads to discrepancies with official statistics. The platform will eliminate the duplication of information flows. Now, all information concerning sustainable development at the global level will be submitted only by Belstat," concluded Elena Kukharevich.