IISD Reporting Services, through its ENB+ Meeting Coverage, provided daily digital coverage and a summary report from the UN World Data Forum 2018, which is availabe in HTML and PDF.

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+ Visit the web coverage for Wednesday, 24 October 2018

Participants during the closing session

Stefan Schweinfest, Director, Statistics Division, UNDESA

Shaida Badiee, Managing Director, Open Data Watch

Francesca Perucci, UN Statistics Division

George McCarthy, President and CEO, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, US

Mahmoud Mohieldin, World Bank Group Senior Vice President for the 2030 Development Agenda, UN Relations, and Partnerships

Abdulla Nasser Lootah, Director General, FCSA, UAE, presents a silver falcon to Maya Tissafi, Ambassador of Switzerland to the UAE, as the host of the next World Data Forum

The silver falcon, with seven feathers representing each of the Emirates, will be carried to the next World Data Forum to be hosted in Bern, Switzerland

Highlights for Tuesday, 23 October 2018

A sign on display around the venue

On the second day of the second UN World Data Forum, participants attended a variety of parallel sessions addressing the Forum’s six themes:

• innovations and synergies across data ecosystems;
• leaving no one behind;
• building trust in data and statistics;
• how far have we come?;
• understanding the world through data; and
• new approaches to capacity development for better data.

The day opened with a session addressing the political economy of statistical capacity, during which panelists noted previous speakers’ comparisons of statistics to water, oil, currency, or an otherwise-vital force, noting that we only tend to recognize when it is missing or of poor quality. Additional issues raised during this session included the need to:

• think of data as the soft infrastructure of development;
• capture the benefits from data driving action at local level;
• engage statisticians in the preparation and presentation of Voluntary National Reviews; and
• participate in the review of the SDGs process that will take place in the context of the 2019 meetings of the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF).

UN World Data Forum participants also engaged in discussions on whether National Statistical Offices (NSOs) will exist in 2030, arriving at the answer of yes, due to their ability to deliver consistency over time and space, high standards for accuracy, and independence.

A discussion on gender data impact stories considered the relationship between a single human story and the data that describe a broader story that has the potential to influence policymakers towards more gender responsive policies.

Additional sessions on Tuesday addressed: trust in data; capacity building for a number of communities, including diplomats and policy-makers; the contribution of data to the lives of children and migrants; community-based data collection; the data revolution and cooperation; Earth observation applications; civil registration and digital identity; and statistical literacy.

During the evening, the host country treated participants to a performance of “La Perle” – a show that combines artistic performance, creative imagery and ground-breaking technology.

Panel speakers for the session "Gender Data Impact Stories: From Data to Action" (L-R): Shaida Badiee, Managing Director, Open Data Watch; Henriette Jansen, UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Asia; Fredrick Makumbi, Uganda Principal Investigator, Performance Monitoring and Accountability 2020; Emily Courey Pryor, Executive Director, Data2X; Daniela Ligiero, Executive Director and CEO, Together for Girls; Marjo Bruun, Director General, Statistics Finland; Rajesh Mirchandani, Chief Communications Officer, UN Foundation; and Nina Rabinovitch Blecker, Data2X

Panel speakers for the session "Will National Statistical Offices exist in 2030: And if they do still exist what will they look like?" (L-R): Claire Melamed, Executive Director, Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data; Ola Awad, President, Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS); Zachary Mwangi Chege, Director General, Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS); Rob Bumpstead, UK Statistics Authority; Oliver Chinganya, Director, African Centre for Statistics, UNECA; and Stefan Schweinfest, Director, Statistics Division, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA)

Martine Durand, Director of Statistics and Chief Statistician, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

Nnenna Nwakanma, World Wide Web Foundation

Shaida Badiee, Managing Director, Open Data Watch

Georges-Simon Ulrich, Swiss Federal Statistical Office

Panel speakers for the session "Data and diplomats: capacity development for diplomats and policy-makers in the data age" (L-R): Javier Teran, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA); Katharina Höne, DiploFoundation; Maria Fasli, Director, Institute for Analytics and Data Science; Graham Nelson, British Diplomatic Service; and Grace Mutung’u, Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet)

Highlights for Monday, 22 October 2018

UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed attending the World Data Forum

The second UN World Data Forum opened on Monday, 22 October 2018. During the opening plenary, Liu Zhenmin, Under-Secretary-General, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, reflected on the value of the Forum to implementing the SDGs and guiding international development policy through the successful integration of economic, social and environmental data. He highlighted the importance of removing barriers to new data sources and modernizing national statistical systems to meet new data demands.

High-level statements were offered by Abdulla Nasser Lootah, Director General, Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Authority, United Arab Emirates, and Amina Mohammed, UN Deputy Secretary-General. Lootah thanked Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, for participating in the session, and highlighted that the UAE is working to ensure the best possible data for driving the Fourth Industrial Revolution, to ensure that it involves the best innovation possible.

Mohammed highlighted that robust and accessible data and information can provide a host of benefits, including the ability of citizens to monitor how their governments are performing and to hold decision-makers to account. She called attention to a number of related UN projects on data, including the Open Data Hub for the SDGs, the Global SDG indicator website, and UN Global Pulse. She also stressed that UN country teams of the future must be equipped with the skills and capacities necessary to harness the opportunities offered by all types of data and innovation.

During an opening roundtable dialogue on harnessing the power of data to meet the data demands of the 2030 Agenda, Mahmoud Mohieldin, World Bank Group, highlighted the 2018 SDG Atlas, which maps, charts and provides stories related to the SDGs and draws on the World Development Indicators, a database of over 1400 indicators for more than 220 economies with data going back 50 years. Omar Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, noted that meteorological and climate change data amounts to 100 million gigabytes per day, and said it would take scientists over one hundred years to analyze. He said this scenario demonstrates humanity’s race against time in the use of data. Harpinder Collacott, Development Initiatives, underscored the value of policymakers at the national and sub-national levels in determining data investments to ensure informed policies for decision making. Clint Brown, Esri, called attention to the emerging opportunities to bring together data from multiple systems as well as the possibilities to use large data sets with cloud systems.

Nearly 2,000 registered participants participated in 30 parallel events during the first day, addressing topics ranging from big data to capacity building, data platforms, and community data collaborations.

Delegates gather for the opening ceremony

Liu Zhenmin, Under-Secretary-General, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA)

UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed

Panel speakers for "Harnessing the power of data for sustainable development" (L-R): Mona Chalabi, The Guardian US; Mahmoud Mohieldin, World Bank Group; Omar Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, UAE; Harpinder Collacott, Executive Director, Development Initiatives; and Clint Brown, Esri

Abdulla Nasser Lootah, Director General, Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Authority, UAE

Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, CEO, DP World