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IPS175 Pietro Gennari et al.
to produce the indicator with official sources. The main reason cited by those
countries who refuse to authorize the publication of country estimates is the
non-official nature of the data source. The result is that for those countries, no
country value is published, as the NSS itself has not yet produced the indicator.
Such an approach effectively presents custodian agencies with a catch 22
situation: they are obligated to request countries’ authorization, due to the
use of non¬official sources, yet most countries deny the authorization
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precisely because of the non-official nature of the data source .
Another problem with the UN Statistical Commission’s recommendation
was that, at the time, no agreed mechanism existed for such a review, not even
a set of key principles able to give guidance on fundamental questions such
as what to do in case countries did not respond to custodian agencies’
solicitations or outright rejected the estimate proposed. This was clearly not a
satisfactory situation, as it meant that even SDG indicators with approved
methodologies could go unreported by the majority of countries. Such an
outcome would evidently hamper the ability to monitor progress toward the
SDGs and risked undermining the credibility of the entire edifice of the 2030
Agenda’s mutual accountability mechanism, grounded on the SDG indicator
framework. In the next section, this article will review the main guidelines that
were developed to address this gap, and highlight some of their key
shortcomings with regard to data validation.

3. Challenges for Data Validation
Acutely aware of the serious implementation challenges posed by the
global reporting process, the UN Statistical Commission in 2017 instructed the
IAEG-SDG to “develop guidelines on how custodian agencies and countries
can work together to contribute to the data flows necessary to have
harmonized statistics”. The resulting “Guidelines on Data Flows and Global
Data Reporting”, developed in consultation with the Committee for the
Coordination of Statistical Activities (CCSA), are a critical document advancing
consensus and collaboration among national statistical systems and custodian
agencies. However, they also have several limitations. Firstly, some of the
provisions in the Guidelines can be questioned as they may hamper, rather
than foster, consensus and collaboration between countries and custodian
agencies. Secondly, even where the Guidelines are more specific, many
countries are still opposed to their practical implementation, which can put
custodian agencies in difficult situations. Thirdly, they are simply “guidelines”,
mainly outlining general principles, and despite additional supporting

The CCSA has developed recommendations and collected best practices on the use of non-
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official data for international statistics, see Op. Cit.
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