Leveraging Administrative Data for Policy and Programmatic Interventions on Gender Specific Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Abstract

The call for a data revolution expressed in the report of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons in the lead-up to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has generated specific attention on the role of data in driving and monitoring sustainable development. Indeed, the availability of and access to high-quality, timely, disaggregated, gender-responsive and reliable data, supplemented with contextual information for its interpretation and use, are fundamental to successful monitoring and reporting of the 2030 Agenda and the Leave No One Behind commitment.

In 2016, UN Women launched its flagship initiative to stimulate sustained production and dissemination of quality gender statistics for monitoring the gender-specific Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators. As part of this initiative, UN Women is vigorously pursuing practical, convenient, cost-effective ways to track these indicators. The Flagship Programme Initiative, Making Every Woman and Girl Count (MEWGC), which UN Women launched in September 2016, has stimulated the search for practical, convenient, cost-effective ways to monitor strategic goals aimed at achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment. The initiative is directly linked to the targets set for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, achieve gender equality and empower women and girls, and other gender-specific SDGs. To assess the direct effect of the SDG commitments on gender equality and women’s empowerment, 54 gender-specific indicators need to be regularly tracked globally.

Better production and use of gender statistics for evidence-based localization of the SDGs is UN Women’s strategy to address the pressing need for better and more gender statistics. In general, the various UN Women regional teams are expected to adapt and implement the global initiatives between 2016 and 2021 by providing direct technical support to countries in their regions–including in pathfinder and selected non-pathfinder countries–(based on demand) and working closely with regional partners to help promote and support country-led plans to localize and monitor the SDGs.

The outcome objectives of the MEWGC project are to strengthen the policy and financial environment to enable gender-responsive national adaptation and effective monitoring of the SDGs; improve production of gender statistics to enable monitoring of national policies and reporting commitments under the SDGs; improve the use of gender statistics by different players to inform advocacy, research, policies and programmes; and generate knowledge on cost-effective ways to provide statistical capacity-building in gender statistics in different contexts. Ensuring the availability, accessibility and use of gender statistics to monitor progress in delivering gender equality and women’s empowerment commitments in the SDGs and to inform policymaking, advocacy and accountability in any region requires well-coordinated, responsive, effective data systems.

Traditionally, there are three approaches to data gathering: censuses, sample surveys and administrative data collection. These approaches have evolved with the data revolution, particularly in response to the complex needs and demands of the SDGs. Various factors inform the choice of a specific method, including quality, coverage, timeliness, cost and purpose. This is especially true for administrative data, which agencies and institutions primarily collect for non-statistical reasons – i.e. to provide overviews on registration, transactions and record keeping. For example, administrative records are maintained to regulate the flow of goods and people across borders, to respond to legal requirements of registering events such as births and deaths and to administer benefits such as pensions or obligations such as taxation.

Given their importance in the data production process, this study focused solely on administrative data systems. The UN Women 2018 report, Turning Promises into Action: Gender Equality in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, uncovered a number of bottlenecks in the production and use of gender statistics, which invariably affect or are affected by data quality and timeliness. This study explored the potential of using administrative data to produce gender statistics for monitoring the SDGs.

As such, UN Women regional Office for East and Southern Africa has documented six good and promising practices that are replicable and are feasible within the framework of leveraging use of administrative data for monitoring and reporting on gender specific Sustainable Development Goals. These are just but a few selected examples of how these governments in Africa have used administrative data and civil and vital statistics to accelerate progress towards realizing the gender specific SDGs.

The compendium defines a good practice within the guideline provided for in the Guide-Documenting good practices on gender equality developed by UN Women in 2015. A good practice is “an intervention, business practice, process or methodology that is responsive to the needs of women and girls, replicable, scalable, and succeeds in achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment. The essence of identifying and sharing a good practice is to learn from others and to encourage the application of knowledge and experience to new situations as they relate to GEWE. A good practice need not be viewed as prescriptive; it can be adapted to meet new challenges, becoming better as improvements are discovered.”

Keywords: SDGs, Administrative data, research, UN Women, East and Southern Africa, good practices, gender equality.

DOI: 10.7176/PPAR/10-8-03

Publication date:August 31^st 2020