Indicator 17.18.1 Statistical capacity indicator for Sustainable Development Goal monitoring

Indicator 17.18.1: Statistical capacity indicators

Target 17.18: By 2020, enhance capacity-building support to developing countries, including for least developed countries and small island developing states, to increase significantly the availability of high-quality, timely and reliable data disaggregated by income, gender, age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability, geographic location and other characteristics relevant in national contexts

Open Data Watch (ODW)

Definitions:

The Open Data Inventory (ODIN) is an evaluation of the coverage and openness of data provided on the websites maintained by national statistical offices (NSOs) and any official government website that is accessible from the NSO site, as well as a country’s official SDG portal.

Capacity to produce a set of official statistics from national databases to support the SDGs: The ODIN Coverage Index refers to the availability of important statistical indicators in 22 categories of social, economic, and environmental statistics. Each data category is assessed on five elements of coverage (see below) that measure how complete the country’s data offerings are.

Information on all elements are collected for each dataset assessed in ODIN, except for elements 4 and 5 (see below) that are not included for some data categories or for small countries.

The five coverage elements (further described in 4.c) are:

1. Availability of indicators and disaggregations
2. Availability of data in the last five years
3. Availability of data in the last ten years
4. Availability of data at the first administrative geographic level
5. Availability of data at the second administrative geographic level

Scores are assigned for each element of each data category, not indicator. In addition, each data category cannot score higher on coverage elements 2-5 than coverage element 1. Aggregate scores are computed across categories and elements.

The availability of official statistics is expressed as an index from 0 to 100—0 expressing no availability and 100 expressing complete availability.

Assessments by Open Data Watch assessors of National Statistical Office (NSO) websites (and any official government sites or portals that are linked to the NSO website).

National Statistical Offices (NSOs) websites and linked websites of the National Statistical System (NSS)

Limitations:

Data produced by supranational entities, such as multilateral organizations may contain national level data but may not be published by national statistical offices. Depending on the governance of a country’s national statistical system, the national statistical office website may not be the central repository of datasets or necessarily link to data portals.

Criteria of Coverage Elements

Availability of indicators & disaggregations (coverage element 1)

This element measures whether indicators are available in each data category and what disaggregations are available.

Because there are a unique number of indicators in each data category, the number of indicators and disaggregations required to receive full credit for this element vary by data category. See the section of the official ODIN methodology, Data Categories & Indicators, for the criteria required in each category for full or partial credit on this element.

Availability of data in the last 5 years (coverage element 2)

This element measures whether the data identified in coverage element 1 are available over the last five years. ODIN 2022/23 includes the years 2017-2021 (or 2016/2017- 2020/2021 for non-calendar years).

If data are presented on a quarterly or monthly basis, a majority of quarters or months for a given year must have data available to receive credit for that year. For example, at least 3 out of 4 quarters or 7 out of 12 months for a particular year must be present to award credit for that year.

The following table shows how each data category is scored for this element. Full credit only requires publication of data for 3 of the last 5 years, since not all indicators have enough variability from year to year to warrant more frequent data collection in many countries.

Availability of data in the last 10 years (coverage element 3)

This element measures whether the data identified in coverage element 1 are available over the last ten years. For ODIN 2022/23, this includes the years 2012-2021 (or 2011/2012- 2020/2021 for non-calendar years)

If data are presented on a quarterly or monthly basis, the majority of quarters or months for a given year must have data available to receive credit for that year. For example, at least 3 out of 4 quarters or 7 out of 12 months for a particular year must be present to award credit for that year.

The following table shows how each data category is scored for this element. Full credit only requires publication of data for 6 of the last 10 years, since not all indicators have enough variability from year to year to warrant more frequent data collection in many countries.

Availability of data at the first administrative geographic level (coverage element 4)

This element records whether the data identified in coverage element 1 are also available at the subnational level defined as the first administrative geographic level. To identify the first administrative levels, ODIN largely draws on the ISO 3166-2 standard. For a full list of first administrative levels used in ODIN, see this file.

If data are presented at the first administrative level, the majority of first administrative level divisions must have data available to receive credit for that year. Credit will only be given for less than a majority of first administrative divisions if there are methodological reasons for them not to exist (sample size is too small, indicator not relevant to those divisions, or other reasons) and this is stated in the metadata of the dataset.

In certain data categories, all indicators in the category are not scored for data at the first administrative level because how these indicators are calculated often do now allow for geographic disaggregation in most countries. These categories are Money & Banking, International Trade, Balance of Payments, and Energy.

The following table shows how each data category is scored for this element.

Availability of data at the second administrative geographic level (coverage element 5)

This element measures whether the data identified in coverage element 1 are also available at the subnational level defined as the second administrative geographic level. Second administrative levels are defined by the country but must be a further division of their first administrative levels. For a full list of the possible second administrative levels used in ODIN, see this file.

If data are presented at the second administrative level, the majority of second administrative level divisions must have data available to award credit for that year. Credit will only be given for less than a majority of second administrative divisions if there are methodological reasons for them not to exist (sample size is too small, indicator not relevant to those divisions, or other reasons) and this is stated in the metadata of the dataset.

In certain data categories, all indicators in the category are not scored at the second administrative level because administrative units responsible for producing these data do not exist in many countries or the indicators are not typically defined for small administrative units. These categories are Money & Banking, International Trade, Balance of Payments, National Accounts, Government Finance, Pollution, Energy, Price Indexes, and Resource Use.

In addition, the following indicators in other categories are not scored at the second administrative level for the same reasons. These include:

(2.3) Education expenditures

(4.3) Health expenditures

(6.1) Maternal mortality rate

(6.2) Infant mortality rate or neonatal mortality rate

(7.3) Prevalence of obesity

(7.4) Prevalence of stunting

(7.5) Prevalence of wasting

(8.2) Proportion of women in government

(9.3) Data on prison population

(10.2) Distribution of income by deciles or Gini coefficient

(18.2) Data on protected lands

The following table shows how each data category is scored for this element.

Coverage scores are the average scores across the five coverage elements. Each element receives a score of 0, .5 or 1. Some category coverage scores will be based on 3 or 4 elements, if first or second administrative level data are not required. You can read more about the coverage elements and how to score them here.

Coverage elements 2-5 cannot score higher than coverage element 1 within any given category.

2024-03-28

Open Data Watch (ODW)

17.18.2, 17.18.3

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