The 75th session of the UN General Assembly recognized that the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic was one of the most significant global challenges in the United Nations' history and noted with deep concern its impact on people the society, and the economy. Thus, at the same session, the General Assembly endorsed a comprehensive and coordinated response to the COVID-19 pandemic (A/RES/74/306) that calls, i.e. for the development of new interoperable data tools and the strengthening of platforms to inform mitigation and response actions and continuously monitor the impact of the pandemic, mainly to assist people in vulnerable situations and the poorest and most vulnerable countries, to build a more equitable, inclusive, sustainable and resilient future. The Resolution further encourages building resilient, inclusive and integrated data and statistical systems, under the leadership of national statistical offices (NSOs), that can respond to the increased and urgent data demands in times of disaster and ensure a path towards the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on climate change. The Project will explicitly address the call of the 75th session of the General Assembly to leverage SDG mechanisms and instruments, including statistics and data, to inform the COVID-19 response and recovery policy. It will also respond to the request addressed by NSOs in both surveys conducted by the WB and UNSD, jointly with the 5 UN Regional Commissions, to consolidate the institutional and organizational frameworks supporting efficient and effective governance and coordination mechanisms of NSS (NSS) and enhance the technical capacity to continue operating effectively and take advantage of the fast-evolving data ecosystem and digital infrastructure. The proposed Project will build on the successes and lessons learned from the Development Account 10th tranche on Statistics and Data (hereafter DA10 Statistics and Data), including the draft final evaluation findings regarding governance, coordination, and implementation modalities. The Project will bring together eight implementing entities of the Secretariat, capitalizing on their technical expertise and comparative advantages, with a common objective to help developing countries face the data challenges of the short- and longer-term development agenda. The specific data needs will also inform COVID-19 response and recovery policy at local, national, regional, and global levels. The Project is expected to improve the resilience and flexibility of NSS to collect, process and communicate data and statistics to inform COVID-19 response and recovery policy at local, national, regional, and global levels. Thus, the Project will address i) the infrastructure underlying the production of official statistics, such as the institutional environment in which NSS operate, quality standards, and the use of new technologies and innovative data sources such as Big Data and geospatial information, supported by agile and resilient statistical production architecture and IT infrastructure; and ii) specific data gaps that will require conceptual and methodological development and leveraging the leadership of the implementing entities in specific sectoral/thematic areas. The Project aims to leverage other initiatives to strengthen statistical capacities to have a higher multiplier effect and work in close partnership with the United Nations system, including the UN resident coordinator system, and other relevant multilateral and bilateral partners. The Project will target more specifically NSS and national geospatial agencies of least developed countries (LDCs), small island developing states (SIDS) and landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) as well as operate at inter-regional, regional, and sub-regional levels, where relevant.

This project’s objective is to enhance the capacity of governments in the Asia-Pacific and Latin America and Caribbean regions to develop evidence-based, intergenerational policies for inclusive and sustainable economic growth in the context of population ageing. The Secretary-General’s report on Our Common Agenda highlighted the importance of strengthening capacities to understand and assess the future, building long-term intergenerational thinking into important policies and decision-making.  This project directly responds to this call by using disaggregated National Accounts data to address the twin goals of inclusion and sustainability in the context of population ageing.  National Inclusion Accounts (NIAs) disaggregate national economic statistics by age and socioeconomic status. NIAs help identify and describe how economic resources are shared between population groups. This type of accounting is needed for long-term forecasts of the costs and funding sources for social protection, education, and health care programmes to ensure their fiscal sustainability and distributional equity. This project will support eight developing countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia and the Pacific to strengthen capacity to produce National Inclusion Accounts, analyze the impacts of population ageing on inclusive and sustainable development, and formulate public policies and plans to achieve these goals.

This project aims to strengthen the capacity of Mauritius, Seychelles, Guinea-Bissau and Jamaica to formulate and implement integrated and coherent national planning and policy that promote social inclusion, macroeconomic stability, effective governance, protection of the environment and mobilizes stakeholders. Based on integrated planning methodologies and the principles of blue and green economy, the focus will be to support the development of economies that are resilient, diversified and have strengthened productive capacities. Environmental vulnerabilities and resilience building, including sustainable forest management, will receive special attention. The project will deliver a program of support that builds on DESA’s existing capacity development activities in integrated recovery planning, economic and environmental modelling, governance and institutional arrangements for policymaking, coordination and implementation, forests and climate financing and SIDS specific support. It will include analysis, training, advice, and stakeholder involvement activities to strengthen national capacities and processes for planning, including establishment of appropriate governance arrangements for formulation and implementation of integrated national development planning and responses to crises, such as those posed by the war in Ukraine and the COVID pandemic. Project impact would be evidenced by the incorporation and use of DESA tools, methods and approaches into national development plans, pandemic recovery strategies and other policies and strategies for the achievement of the SDGs.

The overall objective of the project is to strengthen national capacity in collecting and compiling comprehensive and internationally comparable migration data that meet international standards, and to enhance understanding of the uses and limitations of migration data for policy purposes and for the monitoring of the migration related goals and targets in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
More specifically, in collaboration with partner organisations, the project aims to improve data availability through technical capacity building of countries in producing basic migration statistics, statistics on human trafficking and socioeconomic statistics disaggregated by migratory status for the SDG monitoring. This objective will be achieved through (a) preparing technical guidelines on producing data for migration-relevant SDG indicators; (b) providing trainings to countries so that national statisticians become familiar with international standards on migration statistics and statistics produced are harmonized within the country and comparable at international level; (c) building an online data portal for migration statistics which would enhance the data availability at the international level.

To support the establishment of essential building blocks for development of the Blue Economy in SIDS thereby assisting selected SIDS with bridging capacity gaps in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, with a particular focus on SDG 14

The project aims to help five Least Developed Countries (LDCs) (four in Asia, one in the Pacific) increase their chances of achieving structural economic and social progress toward and beyond graduation from LDC status. This, for the two implementing organizations, involves: (i) provision of country-specific analytical material on the implications of LDC graduation; vulnerability and resilience-building; and smooth transition strategies; (ii) relevant advisory services to policy makers; and (iii) action to help project recipients and LDCs in general understand and use the export-related new requirements issued by trading partners.
The economies of graduating LDCs, while demonstrating forms of structural economic progress, often remain little diversified and dependent on a small number of products or commodities for export. The transformation these countries aim to achieve or pursue implies a range of structural economic changes, notably from lower to higher levels of productivity and value addition. Most graduating countries with an agenda for such progress will need post-LDC support measures, possibly new forms of special treatment after LDC status.
The context of reclassification from LDC status is an opportunity, for these countries, to step up their plea for alternative support measures after graduation, with a view to maintaining their momentum of progress. In short, making the most of LDC benefits while these are still available, then achieving a smooth transition to post-LDC status with some alternative support measures is a broad agenda of these States, an agenda they expect UNDESA and UNCTAD to help them bring to fruition. The project offers the two organizations and the five recipients a practical framework for achieving this goal.
Key stakeholders under the project are government officials in the ministries associated with LDC graduation and its implications: Foreign Affairs, Planning, Finance, Trade and Commerce. The project will enhance the capacities of selected officials within these ministries to: (i) better understand the implications of graduation from LDC status; (ii) incorporate policies aimed at mitigating vulnerability and building resilience into planning documents; (iii) formulate and enact smooth transition strategies; and (iv) keep up with changing international trade requirements.

The project focuses on improving and strengthening the national geospatial information management capacities of developing countries in two beneficiary regions, namely, Africa and Asia and the Pacific, towards implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and evidence-based policy and decision-making. The 2030 Agenda recognizes that timely and accessible geospatial information and statistics, and their combined analyses, are a prerequisite for good policy-making and supporting and tracking development progress. However, there is still a lack of awareness, understanding and uptake of the vital and integrative role of geospatial information within national circumstances, particularly in developing countries. The project supports identified countries in the beneficiary regions to develop and strengthen their national technical capacities and mechanisms through the provision of frameworks and guides that recognize national circumstances through regional or sub-regional activities for: (a) the application of geospatial information to augment national statistical systems and inform the global indicator framework; (b) improving the integration of statistical and geospatial information through implementing the principles of the Global Statistical Geospatial Framework; and (c) improving data sharing and dissemination through appropriate consideration of legal and policy frameworks and guidelines. The project contributes towards improving the timeliness, availability and accessibility of geospatial information at all levels by national geospatial information authorities, thus improving and strengthening national geospatial information management and systems.

The overall objective of the project is to contribute to government capacity to effectively produce and use time-use data in policy formulation for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda in Africa, Latin America and Western Asia. More specifically, in collaboration with ECA, ECLAC and ESCWA, the project will contribute to building capacity in countries to produce and use time-use statistics, in support of measuring and monitoring their national development plans and indicators, including SDG 5.4.1 on unpaid work, as well as indicators on other development issues such as employment and learning. This will be achieved through the development and testing of methodological guidelines on how to modernize the collection, analysis and use of time-use data based on assessments of national capacity and needs in the following regions Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Western Asia (one project country per region). The resulting guidelines will cover cost-effective tools and a sustainable model to institutionalize the systematic collection of time-use data. As part of the rollout phase, the guidelines will be available for use by all countries and will be widely promoted through regional training workshops and national events in the project countries (one project country per region) to promote stronger collaboration between users and producers of time-use data where participants will also identify/map time-use data needs to national development policies. This way, the project will also contribute to improved data/policies integration.

As a set of interconnected goals, monitoring and measuring the progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals necessitates the use of integrated frameworks. The United Nations System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) is an international statistical standard which integrates economic and environmental information into a common framework to measure the contribution of the environment to the economy and the impact of the economy on the environment. The SEEA provides countries with a framework to derive internationally comparable sets of statistics and indicators, supporting measurement of progress towards the SDGs as well as the Aichi Targets, green growth etc.  The project aims to address the technical and institutional barriers to the establishment of routinely produced environmental-economic accounts at the national level by national statistical offices. Project activities will focus on: building the institutional framework in support of SEEA implementation, taking into consideration existing initiatives and activities in the countries and policy priorities; building capacity in the countries to compile selected accounts on a regular basis, while contributing to the development of SEEA compliant global databases; fostering inter-institutional relationships to promote collaboration and data-sharing in producing the accounts; and promoting the effective communication and use of the accounts in supporting evidence-based policy and the SDGs. The project will support up to six developing countries from four different sub-regions—Northern Africa, Eastern Africa, Eastern Asia and Southern Asia—to ensure geographic diversity and multiplication effects in the various regions. Of these six countries, the project will build on initial assistance provided to two countries in Eastern Africa, Kenya and Uganda, during the 9th tranche of the Development Account. Finally, the project will include South-South collaboration fellowships, to allow project countries to visit and learn from each other. 

When good-quality administrative systems are in place and their information is regularly updated, they can reliably provide a full picture of key aspects of a country’s population or economy on a continuous basis. Data collected for administrative purposes can be a rich and cost-efficient source for the production of timely and high-quality official statistics, especially to address the urgent need for disaggregated data on SDG indicators to ensure no one is left behind in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. However, many countries still lack the infrastructure and technical and institutional arrangements needed for the efficient exchange and processing of administrative data and metadata for the production of official statistics. Moving in a direction of increased use of administrative data for statistics production will also make the statistical system more agile and resilient in times of crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic. The project supports 9 countries in addressing legal and technical challenges to administrative data sharing and processing administrative data. For each country one or two thematic areas are chosen. The results of the work will provide practical level experiences that also others can benefit from and will lead to a number of examples along the overall process of using administrative data for statistical purposes; from accessing data to processing them and publishing statistics based on them. Key stakeholders of this work will be the National Statistical Offices and the owners of the administrative data, along with the wider statistical system. Policy and decision makers will benefit from the results of the work.