The Research
Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets to be achieved by 2030 - the development agenda for the global community has been agreed upon and set. Each country will choose the indicators that are best suited to track its own progress towards sustainable development.
Then there are a risks that, by focusing solely on the SDG indicators, governments may waste resources on data for data’s sake, rather than identifying local priorities. Understanding of local priorities require a simple but well-structured bottom-up approach to track the progress towards SDGs by taking into account the views of target beneficiaries and the people involved. Taking a bottom-up approach will be essential to successfully identify and deliver on priorities.
Participatory monitoring is one way of generating the data needed to close the information gaps and achieve the evidence base needed for robust implementation of the SDGs. In this sense, the data/information pouring in from the participatory monitoring will complement, and not intended to substitute, the monitoring based on the non-participatory data compiled by the authorities at national, regional and global level.
The use of IT tools is changing the face of participatory monitoring paradigm by enabling the citizens to provide and the government agencies to receive the feedback on developmental interventions and availability as well as quality of basic services such as roads, water and sanitation, public health facilities, etc.
This research project has been structured around two activity streams – first, generating the ideas and proof of concepts to develop and upgrade IT tools for participatory monitoring of SDGs worldwide; second, actually using the developed tools for generation of data/information for participatory monitoring which will complement the monitoring of indicators based on recorded non-participatory data sets.
Generating the ideas and proof of concepts to develop and upgrade IT tools is being steered by Digital Development Department (3D) of VisionRI guided by a designated research team. A panel of technical advisors provide the mentoring role and contribute for the generation of ideas through online and offline brain-storming and panel discussion sessions periodically.
The web and android based tool being used for this research is a module of the software, IDEA-M&E, designed and developed by VisionRI for the monitoring and evaluation of developmental interventions.
The execution modality of the research is generating crowd-sourced data through a well-designed program of voluntary participation named ‘League of SDGs Samurai’.
The online platform for the research project displays data pouring in for the research on an interactive map as ‘Live Monitoring’. With the help of maps, analytics, and other tools one can witness the continuous monitoring on her screen in real time.
We understand that the crowd sourced data generated under the research project may be useful for governments, development agencies, research institutions, civil society organizations and community groups. For such institutions interested in getting the raw data feed as well as basic analytics for the geographical areas of their interest, we invite institutional partnerships under a simple arrangement called ‘Adopt the Research’. Under this arrangement, we expect the partner institution to duly declare and publicise that it has adopted this research on its website and other publicity material in order to catalyse the process of crowd-sourced data generation. In return, the partner institution will be provided free of cost access to dashboard displaying the crowd sourced data from geographical area of its interest.