Two years after the Commission created the Inter-agency Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG-SDGs), the global statistical community has come together to fulfill the promise of delivering a global indicator framework for the 2030 Agenda as requested by the UN General Assembly.

By adopting the SDGs indicator framework today, the international community has a robust structure in place for keeping track of our efforts to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

With the help of the global SDG indicator framework, the global statistical community will be able to ensure that the follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda is supported by this set of global indicators and based on the best data available, both from new and from traditional sources.

The path to today’s success is the result of collective efforts involving national statistical offices, international and regional organizations, civil society, other stakeholders and UN DESA’s Statistics Division, which serves as the Secretariat for the IAEG-SDGs.

At this historic moment, the Commission also adopted the Cape Town Global Action Plan for Sustainable Development Data, which was developed by the High-level Group for Partnership, Coordination and Capacity-Building for statistics for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (HLG-PCCB).

The Action Plan was launched at the first UN World Data Forum on 15 January, calling for a commitment by governments, policy leaders, and the international community to work collectively toward achieving better data for the SDGs. It also addresses the critical elements necessary for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

The entire global statistical community stands ready to continue the hard work already undertaken on improving methodologies and data and increasing capacity building to ensure the full implementation of the agenda in order to guarantee that no one is left behind.

The Commission also gave the green light to the Global Working Group on Big Data, to explore a technical framework for a global platform in broad partnership with tech companies. It moreover endorsed the principles of Global Statistical-Geospatial Framework and decided to scale up economic statistics and national accounts programmes to produce high-quality data for the SDGs.

The adoption of the draft resolution on the indicator framework and the Cape Town Global Action Plan at the 48th session of the Statistical Commission is a seminal moment in the history of the Statistical Commission, which celebrates its 70th anniversary this year.

In her concluding remarks, the Chair of the Commission, Ms. Wasmália Bivar from Brazil, noted that the global statistical community is “living the history of 70 years… carrying out indivisible, transformative work.”