The Marshall Islands has been told that achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals will be difficult unless the quality of data can be improved.
That was the message highlighted at a meeting last week in the capital, Majuro.
The Marshalls managed to achieve just two of the Millennium Development Goals and is now faced with the challenge of implementing and assessing the 17 SDGs.
Our Marshalls correspondent, Giff Johnson, told Don Wiseman that a critical factor is the lack of resources for delivering the correct statistical information to the Planning and Statistics Office so decisions can then be made on the allocation of funds.
Transcript
GIFF JOHNSON: They don't have very many staff, they have difficulties getting information from a number of the agencies related to government and sometimes, even when there is data, like they referred to databases on live births, they found out that there are three different databases being managed on live births - none of which agree with the other. You know, it is a big challenge to go through and evaluate and deal with both the lack of data and the unreliability of data.
DON WISEMAN: So what are they going to do about it? Can they do anything about it?
GJ: Certainly things can be done about it and the Planning Office says it has requested funding in the new fiscal Budget to hire two additional people. My feeling is that probably they need more than that.
DW: One would imagine a whole lot more. There are so many processes in terms of this data collection, aren't there? They couldn't possibly do it with two additional staff.
GJ: Possibly there is maybe an under appreciation for the value of statistics and analysis and this is one of the big challenges for people concerned with trying to promote performance and performance based budgeting and policies. You know this is something that takes time, for people to move forward and appreciate how data can help sharpen the focus and inform where the budget support should be put. But at the moment, this gathering with the UN and the government agencies and ministries really highlighted that data is a gap in going forward on the Sustainable Development Goals.
DW: The onus is really going to be on donors and organisations like the UN to step up here, isn't it?
GJ: The UN people who were at this consultation in Majuro said they were prepared to provide technical support and advice and already the Pacific Community [SPC] they provide an awful lot of support for statistics collection and particularly for analysis. So there is already a significant amount of involvement from regional and international organisations. I think a key point was brought up by one of the advisors to the Marshall Islands Planning Office is that they have got so few staff and trying to build so called capacity when you only have a single staff person or a couple of staff people, you can only build so much capacity in one person or two people. You simply have to get the numbers of people who are there, who are qualified and who can then be trained up to manage the data.
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