Goal Tracker is a ground-breaking digital platform that enables countries and their citizens to visually track implementation of the Global Goals and related national policies. The platform can be tailored to any specific country, translating complex data on development priorities into innovative and accessible information. The first SDG portal which was developed for the Colombian government was launched in March 2018. Similar portals for the governments of South Africa and Tanzania will be launched ahead of HLPF 2019.

To build a better future we need to understand where action is needed. Tools to gather, present and disseminate SDG data are key to ensuring their extensive and effective use by policymakers. National reporting and dissemination platforms for SDGs (and FFD) are indispensable to policymakers and, indeed, to all stakeholders for understanding where progress is being made and informing future interventions. Data must be accessible - publicly available, relevant, easily visualized and analyzed - to those who want or need to use it.

By turning data into useful, actionable information, Goal Tracker enables evidence-based decision making and ensures greater transparency and accountability around the implementation of the Global Goals and targets. Goal Tracker enables all stakeholders in a country to:
- Explore intuitive and powerful visualizations around the Global Goals and related policies by goal, geography, gender and age.
- Learn about the data gaps across the goals, targets and indicators, making it clear where data is missing.
- Understand the linkages between countries’ national development plans and the SDGs and what policies are in place to meet the goals and targets.
- Act by sharing content and data easily, downloading unique messages from every page.

Developing effective, yet user-friendly, data-driven communication is hard. In the past, initiatives to set up online national reporting and dissemination platforms have delivered mixed results for users. For data visualization to be effective it needs to be developed in close collaboration with the end users, which is why each feature and data visualization tool of the Goal Tracker platform is developed together with the partner country. It uses a simple and modular solution and is built on a foundation of core features and data visualization tools that can be adapted to any country. Together with local partners available data and relevant policies are analysed and then the platform is customized for each country. It draws on national statistics but can also pull data from many of other sources.

Beneficiaries: Central and local government officials, international organizations, media, parliamentarians, civil society, the business sector and academia. Ultimately the main beneficiaries are the citizens through improved development outcomes.

Implementers: In each country we work directly with the national statistical office and the entity within the country responsible for Agenda 2030 (SDG committee or alike).

Other partners: We liaise with members of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data a global network bringing together governments, the private sector, and civil society organizations dedicated to using the data revolution to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Data Act Lab was founded 6 years ago to assist governments, organizations, think tanks and the public to make sense of complex data in order to drive better decision making and in the end create a better world. Over the years we have developed pioneering data visualization tools for world-leading think tanks and development organisations. When Agenda 2030 was adopted in 2015 we wanted to create the most intuitive and user-friendly tool to track progress on the SDGs. Starting off with a blank page we worked for 2 years with the Colombian government to develop a groundbreaking digital platform to track the implementation of the SDGs in Colombia. Colombia’s SDG Portal was launched by President Santos in March 2018 (Colombia SDG portal ) and spurred great interest globally. The platform visualizes implementation across 170 indicators linked to the SDGs and Colombia’s national development plan with targets set for where Colombia wants to be by 2030. The project was led by Colombia’s National Department of Planning (DNP) and National Statistics Office (DANE) and was funded by the Swedish Government.

Many countries got inspired by Colombia’s efforts and wanted similar tools to track performance towards the SDGs. In order to transfer the technological and lessons learnt from Colombia to other countries, in a cost effective and scalable way, the Goal Tracker Platform was developed with funding from the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation. Through the Goal Tracker platform countries share the open source technology.

The Goal Tracker platform is now up and running. It allows countries to quickly get up to speed in tracking performance towards the SDGs. It is built on open source technologies and combines multiple different programming languages to create the best possible experience and ecosystem. It is built on a foundation of core features and data visualization tools that can be adapted to any country. It draws on national statistics but can also pull data from many of other sources such as the United Nations, OECD and the World Bank, as well as innovative sources like citizen generated data, satellite data, telcodata and big data. data, satellite data, telcodata and big data. Through peer to peer learning across countries and regions we will also help countries get up to speed quickly.

We are currently working with the governments of South Africa, Tanzania and Sweden (through their national statistics offices, NSOs) to develop Goal Tracker portals for them. Beta versions of the portals will be launched ahead of HLPF..

The Goal Tracker portals benefit a broad user base, from the general-public users who are interested in learning key facts about the SDGs in each country, to the technical experts who are interested in producing complex analytical outputs that could shape national policies towards the implementation of the 2030 Agenda in each country.

The overall long-term objective of this initiative is to allow an unlimited number of countries to use state-of-the-art data visualization tools based on Open Source technology to track and analyze implementation of the SDGs at the national level in order to drive better policies and ultimately improve development outcomes. By opening up the data to the public and broader user groups, the Goal Tracker Platform and National Goal Tracker Portals will increase transparency, accountability and offer a common platform for debate around Agenda 2030 in each country.

The end results is that citizens and decision makers will have access to a communication platform that can explain if and where there is progress on the implementation of the SDGs and why specific targets and interventions need to be prioritized. It offers a common space for multiple stakeholders to engage with the 2030 Agenda and to hold each other to account. Ultimately the platform can contribute to better development outcomes for people and the planet.

The beneficiaries (see listed above) are expected to benefit from the Goal Tracker in the following areas:
- Easier access to data/increased transparency
- Improved tools for effective monitoring of results and accountability
- Improved tools for decision-making and resource allocation
- Enhanced collaboration between all actors
- Integration with broader SDG community; cross-country collaboration
- Ultimately better development outcomes for citizens

By incorporating Google Analytics and other similar analytics software, the platform captures useful metrics that track the number and type of users accessing the platform. The platform is also fully integrated with social media, allowing for content and data to easily be downloaded and shared with unique messages for every page.User can also automatically create presentations and reports based on the web content and data visualizations.The Colombian government currently uses the platform as their main source of communication around the SDGs and Agenda 2030 in Colombia both internally and externally (see video below).

Enabling factors:

Political leadership is key: Strong governmental commitment to the 2030 Agenda is needed and a relatively well-functioning statistical agency that can provide indicator data and metadata in one of the supported JSON/CSV or SMDX formats is required.

Ownership: The online platform is open-access and open source but each country-specific platform is owned and run by the government in the respective country, usually through its Ministry for Planning and/or National Statistics Office. Local partners receive training and are given the technical know-how to take ownership of the work. Each visualization tools is designed together with the local partners in order to make sure that the tools is tailor made to their needs.

Constraints:

Lack of data: Many countries experience great constraints in data availability. We therefore soon realized that we had to build the Goal Tracker platform so that it also supports qualitative pages that enable a country to include information on its challenges and opportunities in implementation of the SDGs. Goal Tracker can also integrate country data from various non-traditional data sources in order to complement the countries’ official statistics.

Many countries have shown interest in the Goal Tracker platform. We wish to identify more countries from other regions that can become champions on Agenda 2030 and inspire others to follow. We are currently in dialogue with a number of countries that have shown interest in the Goal Tracker platform including the following:

Africa: Mozambique, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Tunisia, Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda

Asia/Middle East: Bangladesh, Cambodia, Kyrgyzstan, Palestine

Europe: Macedonia

Latina America: Guatemala, Guyana

Additional features: Goal Tracker is an evolving platform. We will constantly and in dialogue with the partner countries building out new features of the platform including the following:
- Report Generator/Automated VNR: Generate beautiful VNRs and other reports based on official guidelines with charts included
- Tools to visualize countries’ budgets (domestic and external) to meet the goals and targets
-Agenda 2063 Toolkit: Facilitates visualizing frameworks side by side (national development policy side by side with Agenda 2030 and Agenda 2063)
- Additional tools for data stories: View the data from new angles. Goal Tracker will provide new types of custom pages for geo-oriented and other data

Adoption to other contexts:

Cities/Municipalities: The Goal Tracker Platform may also be adapted to track performance at city or county level. We are currently in dialogue with the city of Uppsala in Sweden to develop a Goal Tracker for Uppsala. Uppsala has come very far in linking its city development plan to the SDGs. By using Uppsala as a champion we can come up with a prototype that can be scaled to other cities our counties globally.

Private Sector:Similarly Goal Tracker could be adapted for the private sector allowing a company to track performance of its operations against the SDGs.

Policy areas: Goal Tracker could be used to focus on one specific goal and assess data and policies around that specific goal allowing for comparison globally, by region and nationally.

By sharing the technology for all countries and potential user groups we can offer many entities to use state of the art data visualization tools and technology to a fraction of the costs.

The 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals, which came into effect on 1 January 2016, will shape sustainable development policy through 2030. Governments have committed to providing systematic follow-up of the 17 SDGs and 169 associated targets, to support accountability to citizens at the national, regional and global levels guided by a key commitment to “leave no one behind.”

For the SDGs to have the greatest effect, it is vital that indicator data is available to the widest possible audience and that they are reliable, timely and accessible. Four years into the agenda, there is a general understanding that efforts to achieve the SDGs and to ensure that no one is left behind are far from sufficient. Research suggests that without a significant change of course, no countries will meet the targets by 2030 and millions of people will be left behind. In order to fully realize the potential that data can offer to both achieving, monitoring and reviewing the SDGs, broad access to tools, capacity building and partnerships that help turning data into useful, actionable information for evidence-based decision making is needed. Greater transparency and accountability can be provided by the dissemination of timely data (official and non-official data, including big data and citizen data) on development trends and resources in a common, open and electronic format.

Accessible data won’t have an impact if prospective users lack the awareness, confidence and desire to use the data. In the past, initiatives to set up online national reporting and dissemination platforms have often failed. Data has not been presented in ways that can be easily understood by the end-users. Data that is not used is of no value. The gap between data producers and data consumers needs to be closed.

Shaping an ecosystem within which open data is valued and people are empowered to share and use information is necessary to turn data into action and ultimately better development outcomes. Increased data literacy could improve public service delivery, promote citizen-government dialogue and strengthen civil society and a free media.

Goal Tracker tries to overcome past challenges. It enables countries and their citizens to visually track implementation of the Global Goals and related national policies. The platform is tailored to any specific country, translating complex data on development priorities into innovative and accessible information. The core features and data visualization tools is co-created with the end users to ensure it is fit for purpose. In order to succeed ownership and leadership is key. With it we can move mountains.

For a presentation of the Goal Tracker Platform please visit www.goaltracker.org

Dive into and explore the Colombian SDG portal on this link: www.ods.gov.co

To learn about the benefits about the Colombian SDG portal check this video:https://vimeo.com/272948883

For work in progress please check out the following mockups:https://projects.invisionapp.com/share/NTOENAYVCSQ#/screens/323727972

https://projects.invisionapp.com/share/BJOGEE6FREZ#/screens/324283820

For more of our work please visit www.dataactlab.com and this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSmKrREoVIk