1. What is the indicator set monitoring global goals?
The global goal indicator set was developed by the United Nations, and its task is to enable the assessment of progress in the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals – SDGs of the 2030 Agenda. Owing to the uniform set of measures, not only is it possible to make comparisons among individual countries and regions, but it is also possible to present changes globally.
2. What is the indicator set monitoring national priorities?
The indicator set monitoring national priorities was developed in order to monitor Poland’s sustainable development priorities, established at ministerial level and defined in the Report Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in Poland. The 2018 National Report. It is based on the indicators monitoring currently the most important strategic document in Poland – the Strategy for Responsible Development. In line with the 2030 Agenda’s assumption, the signatory countries are encouraged to determine their own sustainable development priorities, taking into account the country situation and its specificity, and measure their implementation with their own indicator sets.
3. What is the meaning of the following statuses: Reported online, Statistics in progress and Exploring data sources?
Reported online – refers to indicators available for Poland.
Statistics in progress – refers to indicators whose source has been identified, and the current work is focused on collecting suitable data and metadata. As soon as the work is finished, the collected information will be integrated into the platform resources.
Exploring data sources – refers to indicators for which the process of exploring data source is still in progress.
4. Why are data for Poland not available for certain indicators monitoring the global goals?
The thematic scope of the global indicators is beyond the statistical survey program of the official statistics. Currently, Statistics Poland provides data for more than half of the global metrics. Furthermore, in some cases, the official statistics refrains from presenting data for indicators from the UN list. This occurs e.g. when a given indicator is thought to be irrelevant for monitoring sustainable development in Poland’s context. ‘Mortality rate attributed to unsafe water, unsafe sanitation and lack of hygiene – exposure to unsafe Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for All (WASH services)’ might serve as an instance of indicator referring to the phenomenon absent from Poland.
5. Will unreported indicators be presented in the database in the future?
Official statistics aims at ensuring data for all the indicators from the global list with developed methodology and relevance for monitoring situation in Poland. Cooperation within this scope is carried out with other public institutions. When a suitable data source is detected, indicator values are calculated and the platform resources are updated (the indicator’s reporting status is then presented as ‘Reported online’). For about 30% of indicators (outside the scope of the official statistics), data source analysis is still in progress. So as to bridge the information gaps, Statistics Poland is exploring possibilities of using experimental data coming from its research activities including big data analysis. There is work going in the field of application of the satellite remote sensing for calculating some SDG indicators, i.a. metrics for sustainable urbanization and access to public and green space.
6. Why can there be differences between national and global indicator values for Poland in the platform and UN database?
National official statistics are the data source for the majority of indicators presented in the UN global database. For some indicators, respective international organizations produce estimated data or recalculate data sent by individual countries so as to ensure international comparability. They use their own methodology for that purpose. When in the global database, there are data recalculated by the international organizations, there might be differences between them and the data in the national SDG platform.
7. Why are some global goal indicators marked as proxy?
A proxy indicator is proposed when data for an original indicator from the UN list are not available for Poland. Proxy indicators refer to the same goal and target, and stay close to the meaning of original indicators. Differences between them may result from the fact that e.g. a given proxy indicator does not include all constituents of the original indicator or refers to a different age group. Presentation of proxy indicators by individual countries due to unavailability of original indicators remains in accordance with the 2030 Agenda. Information on the original indicator that has been replaced with a proxy is provided in the indicator’s metadata profile under the item “Notes”.
8. Why do some global indicators show only values 0 or 1?
This situation takes place when the UN global list indicator is a non-statistical indicator and characterizes e.g. the degree of implementation of a given legal regulation or strategy, or dissemination of some sort of institutions on a global scale. At the national level, such indicators are presented as zero-one. They assume value 1 if a specific event has taken place (e.g. a given country has implemented a legal regulation), and 0 if it has not taken place (a given country has not implemented the legal regulation).
9. What types of charts are available in the platform? What does the chart selection depend on?
In the SDG platform, visual data are presented in the form of line and dot charts. In most cases, the line charts are used for visualisation. This form of presentation is recommended for value changes in time. Due to specific methodology (e.g. when combining values for individual years is incorrect), for some indicators dot charts are preferred. These charts are also applied to indicators which derive from surveys conducted every two years or even less frequently.