Paving the way for SDG success

Ever since the UNDP’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) took effect on 1 Jan 2016, organisations in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors all over the world have aligned themselves behind these goals with the aim of reaching them by 2030. They include ending poverty in all its forms everywhere, ensuring access to water and sanitation for all, taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts, to name a few.

Demonstrating achievement in meeting these goals, however, requires significant monitoring across an enormous range of data sources — a task that’s simply impossible to undertake manually. For an organisation to stay on track, progress needs to be monitored year on year and course corrections have to be made when necessary. And they all have to be done in real-time, to avoid finding out that a project hadn’t met its goals or objectives towards the SDGs, only after it has come to a close. Too late!

At TolaData, we’re committed to our role in helping organisations fulfill their SDGs, by building tools that offer best practice standards for M&E and program management. Through our platform, organisations can digitalise their data collection, data management, and indicator tracking using the latest technology. This gives them not only access to the best there is today, but also an approach that always places them at the cutting edge of the industry.

Lastly, we engage with the OCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data in The Hague as well as with networks like the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data to examine how we can support organisations in standardising their monitoring against the SDGs — by including key indicators for the SDGs in our indicator library, for instance. We are also working on ways to suggest indicators that align to the SDGs, so that their contributions to the overarching goals can be easily tracked.