The UN World Data Forum seeks to build partnerships and mobilize high-level political and financial support for better data for sustainable development. The Forum gathers representatives from national statistical offices (NSOs), international organizations, and civil society organizations, along with data scientists from the private sector and academia, to discuss challenges and opportunities for harnessing the power of data and monitoring to contribute to the achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The first and second meetings of the World Data Forum (WDF) took place in 2017 and 2018 in Cape Town, South Africa and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, respectively. A virtual event took place in 2020, due to the global pandemic, and a hybrid event took place in 2021 in Bern, Switzerland.

The Cape Town WDF concluded with the launch of the Global Action Plan for Sustainable Development Data, which resulted from a call to recognize that modernizing NSOs is essential for achieving the SDGs. The Dubai Declaration, announced at the conclusion of the Dubai WDF, focuses on the theme, “Supporting the Implementation of the Cape Town Global Action Plan for Sustainable Development Data.” The Bern Data Compact for the Decade of Action on the SDGs, which was announced during the closing session of the 2021 WDF, expresses participants’ commitments to strengthen partnerships and leverage data solutions to produce inclusive data.

The 2023 UN World Data Forum, which convened from 24-27 April 2023, in Hangzhou, China, followed up on the outcomes of these previous meetings and sought to address solutions to challenges identified by the global data and statistics community. The Statistics Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs supported the organization of the Forum. China’s National Bureau of Statistics hosted the meeting.

The 2023 edition of the Forum was organized around four thematic areas through a series of high-level plenary meetings, learning labs, demonstration sessions and exhibits. The following thematic areas of the Forum addressed major areas identified by data stakeholders:

• Innovation and partnerships for better and more inclusive data
• Maximizing the use and value of data for better decision making
• Building trust and ethics in data
• Emerging trends and partnerships to develop the data ecosystem

The 2023 UN World Data Forum encouraged participants to make commitments to an open, innovative, and practical partnership to advance the global data ecosystem.

The ENB team at the UN World Data Forum 2023 was Wanja Nyingi, Ph.D., Vijay Kolinjivadi, Ph.D., and Denise Young. Diego Noguera was the digital editor, and Leila Mead was the editor.