Today more than half of the world’s population has no access to social protection at all. In Lao PDR and Tajikistan exclusion is even larger with, respectively, 87.9 and 73.4 percent of the population with no income security in cases of old age, maternity, unemployment and other life cycle and socioeconomic risks.  Poor governance, lack of integrated policy responses, and insufficient and unsustainable financing of social protection are key issues for a number of countries including Lao PDR and Tajikistan in their efforts to extending the coverage of social protection to all. There is a growing need for awareness raising at the global and national levels as well as for the sharing of knowledge and good practices, and the development of practical guidance for the strengthened governance and digitalization of social security systems, identified as a key accelerator enabling to leapfrog some of the bottlenecks to close the social protection coverage gap. The main objective of the project is thus to accelerate and extend universal social protection through the strengthening of the policy design, administrative governance and the digital transformation of social protection systems in Lao PDR and Tajikistan, and promote lessons learned to benefit other countries in the Global South. The project will pursue a two-fold strategy. In two focus countries, Lao PDR, and Tajikistan, technical support will be provided through the ILO country offices to strengthen governance, social security administration and services, and technical capacities of institutions and practitioners, including through the promotion of connectivity and digitalization. In parallel, the project will develop a knowledge base of good practices as well as hands-on training modules including on digital transformation of social protection planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluation. These knowledge products will be useful for all countries and disseminated widely through UNRC network, DESA and ILO websites, seminars/workshops and training sessions including as part of the course offer of the ILO International Training Centre in Turin.

The Data For Now initiative (Data4Now) aims to develop countries’ capacities to deliver the information needed by local and national policy and decision makers to achieve the 2030 Agenda and make a positive difference in people’s lives.  To this end, it supports members of the national statistical systems in participating countries to collaborate more effectively with local, national and global partners from intergovernmental organizations, academia, civil society and the private sector, in order to leverage innovative sources, technologies and methods for the streamlined production and dissemination of better, more timely and disaggregated data for sustainable development. The initiative, which was launched by UN Deputy-Secretary General Amina Mohammed on 25 September 2019 on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, seeks to enhance collaboration and promote synergies across increasingly complex data systems, supporting the mainstreaming of data innovations into official statistical production processes, including geospatial information, big data and other non-traditional data sources.  It is co-led by a core team consisting of the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the World Bank, the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD), and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). A set of eight trailblazer countries from 3 continents have already joined the initiative, namely: Bangladesh, Nepal, Mongolia, Paraguay, Colombia, Ghana, Rwanda and Senegal. Data4Now is about accelerating the sustainable use of robust new methods and innovative tools that improve the timeliness, coverage, and quality of SDG data through collaboration, partnerships and capacity development. It draws closely from the learnings of previous and ongoing work carried out by UNSD, the World Bank, GPSDD, and SDSN, and has been designed with inputs from government, civil society, academic and private sector partners.  An inception workshop of the Data4Now initiative was hosted by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda, in Kigali, Rwanda, on 13-14 November 2019. In this inception workshop, funded jointly by the four core partners, representatives from national statistical systems in the eight trailblazer countries, as well as partners from the private sector, academia and international identified priority needs and deliverables, and explored possible partnerships and solutions around data, technology and methods with highest potential impact to attain those deliverables. Building on the outcome of the inception workshop, the UNSD, in close coordination with other Data4Now core partners, has developed a plan of action to build the capacity of Colombia and Senegal, two Data4Now trailblazer countries that are also priority target countries for the Italian development cooperation. This  plan of action foresees specific activities to support the collection, analysis and use of accurate, inclusive and up-to-date data for the SDGs on two priority themes identified by their respective national statistical system authorities, namely (1) measurement of poverty indicators among difficult-to-reach population groups, and (2) production of disaggregated and timely crop-yield estimates.