Page 76 - Special Topic Session (STS) - Volume 2

STS461 Maciej T.
1. Introduction
Four years after the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been
adopted, it becomes more and more clear to a growing number of
stakeholders that the fulfilment of the SDGs will only be possible, if all
stakeholder groups, public and private, play an active role in the
implementation of the 2030 Agenda.
At the centre of the implementation of the SDGs lie the data on which
performance will be measured and evaluated and new initiatives taken,
irrespectively of whether you are a government official, an NGO or a private
sector representative. Statistics Denmark has from the outset shown
engagement and willingness to become a major voice in the debate on the
statistical follow up on the 2030 Agenda in Denmark. The first step in this
direction was developing a data platform (national reporting platform) to
present the Danish follow-up on the global indicators. The development of
the platform was organized as a project with a project manager and a steering
group. In its current form, the data on the platform is mainly based on the data
sources from Statistics Denmark’s own production system and is compiled in
collaboration with different units within the office. But it is our ambition to
develop the platform so that it shows development in other SDG relevant
domains, such as private sector’s activities and contribution to the SDG, and
civil society’s activities. In order to address those ambitions, the existing data
in Statistics Denmark is not sufficient. It is therefore necessary to reach out to
other data producers and sources, and investigate what data can be
applicable. In this regard, Statistics Denmark is conducting a number of
initiatives focusing on SDG data and is in dialogue with various stakeholders,
be it private sector, civil society, or municipalities and is considering how to
include data from different sources in the statistical follow-up on the SDGs.
Among those initiatives, the goal of following up on private sector
activities relating to the 2030 Agenda is the focus of this paper. Other
initiatives, such as data disaggregation, use of data from non-official sources,
coordination of data streams for the global reporting, and compilation of
national indicators will also be described in this paper, though to a lesser
degree.
As a concluding remark, in the spirit of SDG 17, Statistics Denmark has
established a Partnership for SDG data. The primary idea was collaboration
between all stakeholders to ensure the best possible reporting on the UN
indicators and a dialogue between data producers, data users and
stakeholders. Furthermore, through a dialogue with stakeholders, a parallel
goal was to ensure that it is data that are topic for debate and not the
methodology or data sources. And finally, a dialogue with a wide range of
stakeholders draws our attention to other data sources than those already
used in Statistics Denmark.

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