Medienmitteilung

PARIS21 Spring Meeting PARIS21 Spring Meeting. Going local to leave no one behind: The role of sub-national data

22.03.2023 - The Federal Statistical Office (FSO), together with Partnership in Statistics for Development in the 21st Century (PARIS21) and the Canton of Basel-Stadt, held the 2023 Spring Meeting today in Basel. After the thriving success of the event “International Geneva: Can we beat the chimps with data and statistics?” the aim of this meeting was to focus on the role of sub-national data in leaving no one behind.

Low- and middle-income countries are on the frontline of climate change, humanitarian crises and other global challenges. Vulnerable and poor communities, women and marginalised groups are often the hardest hit and the most susceptible to being left behind.

Sub-national data can play a critical role in helping to identify these groups and informing policies and programmes to address their needs, yet countries with low statistical capacity may have to overcome a set of hurdles to leverage local data to their full extent.

Today, more than 115 cities and localities have published Voluntary Local Reviews to assess the implementation of the SDGs at a local level, yet they vary widely in terms of their methodology, reporting format and contents, making comparison difficult.

The conference therefore featured a series of in-person sessions bringing together policymakers, national and local statistical offices, private sector representatives, foundations, international organisations, civil society, and academia to explore the promise and pitfalls of local and sub-national data in developing country contexts.

Mr Beat Jans, President of the Government of the Canton of Basel-Stadt, Switzerland, underlined the importance of local data, as well as the gaps and challenges that still need to be overcome to obtain the necessary local data. He stressed that the potential impact of these data on the welfare of communities is even more significant during humanitarian and other crises where timeliness is of the essence to ensure lifesaving support for affected and vulnerable communities.

A day full of rich discussion

The 2023 PARIS21 Spring Meeting seeks to understand how and where sub-national and local data are bringing about transformative change, and to identify financing solutions for data localisation issues.

Over the day, four sessions focusing on local data were held. Panellists explored issues including:

What does ‘local data’ mean and why does it matter to policy making in LMICs?
What does local data reveal about climate change?
How can new partnerships unlock financing for local and sub-national data?
How are organisations and governments using local data to tackle humanitarian challenges?

The event concluded with a call to action to leverage the potential of local data to address global challenges.