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IPS175 Pietro Gennari et al.
The intergovernmental body responsible for developing and endorsing new
methods is the UN Statistical Commission, supported by the IAEG-SDG. Given
that the IAEG-SDG’s approval of new methods was a prerequisite for initiating
country and global reporting on new SDG indicators, the “reclassification” of
Tier III indicators was highlighted as a priority already in the report of the 2016
UN Statistical Commission, and became the biggest focus of the IAEG-SDG’s
work over the past three years. The modalities for this process of
methodological development were not codified at the beginning of the IAEG-
SDG process, and have changed significantly over time.
Another key challenge that countries and custodian agencies have faced
in global SDG reporting is data validation. Multiple decisions by the UN
Statistical Commission have urged custodian agencies to produce SDG
indicators based on data produced by national statistical systems. In fulfilling
their global monitoring role, however, custodian agencies may need to adjust
national data to ensure their compliance with global statistical standards and
their international comparability, which is a prerequisite for compiling regional
and global estimates. For the same purpose, custodian agencies may also
estimate country-specific values of SDG indicators when national official data
do not exist, are incomplete, or are of poor quality. In all these cases, custodian
agencies are requested “to consult with concerned countries to produce and
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validate modelled estimates before publication” . Specific guidelines on global
data flows between countries and custodian agencies, however, were not
available in the initial stages of the process. To address this gap, the IAEG-SDG
prepared a series of documents defining “guidelines of how custodian
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agencies and countries can work together to contribute to the data flows
necessary to have harmonized statistics” for monitoring the SDG targets.
While the work done under the overall umbrella of the IAEG-SDG has
contributed to clarifying many of the issues involved in the validation of
methods and data for SDG indicators and the governance of the international
statistical system, numerous issues remain to be solved. This article highlights
some of the main challenges in the practical implementation of the guidelines,
identifies areas in need of further guidance from the IAEG-SDG and provides
some proposals aimed at improving the global SDG reporting process.

2. Challenges for Methodological Validation
The procedure to validate methods was instituted at the third IAEG-SDG
meeting in March 2016, when the newly introduced “Tier classification”

4 UNGA resolution 71/313, Op. Cit.
5 “Guidelines on Data Flows and Global Data Reporting for Sustainable Development Goals”,
Op. Cit; “Criteria for the Implementation of the Guidelines on Data Flows and Global Data
Reporting for Sustainable Development Goals”, Op. Cit.; and “Best Practices in Data Flows and
Global Data Reporting for the Sustainable Development Goals”, Op. Cit..
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