The SDG National Reporting Initiative was a two-year initiative to facilitate greater information-sharing on SDG reporting between international, regional, and local communities.

The SDG National Reporting Initiative was launched in August 2017 as a two-year initiative led by the Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE) and funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to facilitate greater information-sharing on SDG reporting between international, regional, and local communities. The Initiative included three core areas of work:

  1. Coordination mechanisms

  2. Open-source software development

  3. Training materials

To enable information-sharing and coordination, CODE developed an online resource library.

As part of this Initiative, CODE also focused on supporting the adoption of open-source SDG national reporting platforms (NRPs). CODE worked with government teams in the United States and United Kingdom to merge their open-source NRPs into a shared codebase, known as the Open SDG platform.

Open SDG is freely available for anyone to use, can be hosted and maintained at no cost, and can be modified to fit a variety of user needs. For more information about Open SDG, visit the website or reach out to the Open SDG development team by email at opensdg@googlegroups.com.

While the SDG National Reporting Initiative has formally concluded, CODE looks forward to continued development of the SDGs as a framework for positive change. We welcome input, ideas, and opportunities for collaboration at contact@odenterprise.org as we continue our own commitment to the global agenda represented by the SDGs and the use of data to help achieve them.

TOP RESOURCES from the Online Resource Library

A World That Counts: Mobilising the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development -- An overview of the data revolution for sustainable development, recommendations, and a call to action to the global community.

Author: UN Independent Expert Advisory Group on a Data Revolution for Sustainable Development (IAEG-SDGs)

Approaches to SDG Reporting: Overview and Country Examples -- A video overview of current approaches to SDG reporting with examples of reporting platforms from different countries and regions. Demos of the features of the United Kingdom's and the Philippine’s platforms are featured as well as a demo of the African Information Highway.

Author: Center for Open Data Enterprise

IODC18 Pre-Event Outcome Report -- The event, titled National Reporting for the SDGs: Using open data interoperability to maximize impact, featured representatives from seven national statistical offices (NSOs) who were invited to give their perspectives on SDG reporting and the challenges and opportunities that come alongside it. This outcome document provides a summary of the main challenges presented at the meeting, followed by take-away points from the problem solving sessions, and concludes with a discussion of SDG reporting-related events at IODC and next steps for the SDG reporting agenda, open data, and interoperability.

Authors: Open Data for Development, PARIS21, Inter-American Development Bank, Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, World Bank, International Development Research Centre, the United Nations Statistics Division, and Open Data Watch

Localizing the SDGs -- A collection of tools and resources to support local stakeholders, and in particular local and regional governments, by pointing out best practices to efficiently design, implement and monitor policies in line with the SDGs. Localizing development means taking into account subnational contexts in the achievement of the 2030 Agenda, from the setting of goals and targets, to determining the means of implementation and using indicators to measure and monitor progress.

Author: Localizing the SDGs

Main Messages from 35 VNR Countries Outline SDG Actions and Plans -- A summary of the main findings from 35 of the voluntary national reviews (VNRs) that were submitted at the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF). The findings are broken down by region and report on a few of the success stories and challenges that countries have faced in achieving the 2030 Agenda.

Author: International Institute for Sustainable Development

Mexico National Reporting Platform Repository -- An open-source web-based front-end for sharing and visualizing data from the ods.org.mx API. Features include: subnational mapping, search, calendar.

Author: Mexico National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI)

National Mechanisms for Providing Data on SDG indicators -- Guidelines to help NSOs in choosing mechanisms for providing data on SDG indicators. Aspects of data flow that are considered include: the role of various actors, the various types of data, and models for national reporting on the global SDG indicators.

Authors: UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), Conference of European Statisticians' Steering Group on Statistics for SDGs

Open SDG -- Open SDG is a reporting platform developed for managing and publishing data and statistics related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is built exclusively with open-source libraries and tools and can be hosted and maintained using free services.

Author: Open SDG

SDG Dashboards: The role of information tools in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda -- Learnt lessons and emerging practices from setting up dashboards to support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda in Latin America, based on analysis of five country-level experiences: Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Paraguay.

Author: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

SDG Monitoring and Reporting Toolkit for UN Country Teams -- This toolkit, launched by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) Statistics Division, aims to support national governments in their efforts to monitor and report on progress towards the SDGs. As a live document, the toolkit will be continuously updated as new resources become available. The toolkit organizes resources into sections on global policies and guidelines, data, SDG localization and implementation, and capacity building and coordination.

Author: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs

SDG National Reporting Platforms Inventory -- A working list of links to country SDG reporting websites, data assessments, and Voluntary National Reports.

Author: Center for Open Data Enterprise