Today, the Web Foundation joined international governments, businesses, and civil society organisations in pledging to tackle the data crisis through the formation of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data.

The Partnership, which will be formally launched in September at the UN General Assembly, brings together more than 20 organisations working towards a common goal: harnessing the Data Revolution for inclusive growth and sustainable development.

Why is this so important? World leaders are set to agree new Sustainable Development Goals in September, but these must be backed with robust and high-quality data to ensure that agreed upon outcomes are met.

For example, the Web Foundation’s Open Data Barometer shows that just 12% of governments openly release data on education, and only 7% of governments release data on health services. This means large inaccuracies go unnoticed and uncorrected, and citizens cannot monitor whether governments are making progress on delivery.

Attending a side-event organised by ONE in Addis Ababa during the UN Financing for Development Conference, Africa Regional Director Nnenna Nwakanma said:

“Data is a matter of life and death. Unfortunately few governments are making the data they collect easily available to people on the ground, who would be able to compare the official picture to reality. This is why we’re proud to join organisations like the World Bank, Hewlett Foundation, WEF, ONE, the US, Kenyan and Mexican Governments along with many others in this initiative.”

The Global Partnership on Sustainable Development Data will:

• promote new data principles and norms and strengthen those that already exist;
• incentivise data generation to fill key data gaps that make a difference to people’s lives, in particular the poor and excluded;
• expand open data access to increase the timeliness, interoperability, use, and value of data that already exist; and
• support capacity building and peer learning of users and producers with a view to measure, monitor, evaluate progress on, and deliver the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Web Foundation will continue to work with all stakeholders to tackle the data crisis. Our signature initiatives and programmes like Open Data Barometer will be accompanied by our engagement in Data Labs, the International Open Data Charter, the African Data Consensus, Open Data for Developing Countries (ODDC), the Open Contracting Data Standards (OCDS) and our inclusive and participative research in data for development.

More details and a full list of the champions for the Global Partnership on Sustainable Data can be found at www.one.org/ffd3. Further champions are expected to join ahead of the formal launch in September.