The Republic of Moldova has completed data mapping which is the backbone for the implementation of the 2030 Development Agenda. The exercise was organized under the leadership of the State Chancellery and the National Bureau of Statistics, with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Similar pilots are being organized in other seven countries, with UNDP’s assistance.

The 2030 Development Agenda was adopted unanimously by all UN member states in September 2015 and comprises 17 Global Goals, the Sustainable Development Goals, aiming to fight poverty, inequality and climate change. At the moment, Republic of Moldova gets ready to nationalize the Global Goals.

“The Government of the Republic of Moldova is to undertake the leading role in development and implementation of a solid process on measurement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which is a rather big challenge even for the developed countries. Our success depends on the correct setting of the national targets, which is to be done during the nationalization to be launched in June, but also on the collective action at all levels through shared responsibility and reliable partnerships between authorities and civil society, private sector, international development organizations.” said Tudor Copaci, General Secretary of the Government.

After a round of complex consultations with policy-makers, line-ministries, public institutions, private organizations, civil society and development partners and an online questionnaire, a national report has been developed to inventory the data system in the country. Its overall objective was to assess the availability of data and institutional modernization capacity needed to implement the 2030 Development Agenda. 

This report includes, on the one hand, an overview of the situation at the national level of strategic documents and the relationship thereof with the SDGs, the data model ecosystem applied in Moldova for public policy decision-making. The documents recommends, on the other hand, future actions at the national level for achieving data revolution. Hence, citizens and civil society need to be empowered with more responsibility and to be involved in decision-making processes. Also, the number of official statistics data producers is to be increased. At the same time, formal and professional education and data literacy are absolutely necessary in order to enable the development of skills and to allow the efficient and full use of data.

“The need to strengthen the revolutionary use of the huge volumes of statistics and data, by exploring new technologies and innovative approaches, with the support and expertise of academia, the private sector and civil society, encouraging innovation in the production of statistics, but at the same time recognizing and strengthening the coordination role of national statistical offices in this area are considered among the critical items of post-2015 agenda”, said Narine Sahakyan, UNDP Moldova’s Deputy Resident Representative.

Data is central for the achievement of the Global Goals and is essential in decision-making. The Deputy General Director of the National Bureau of Statistics, Ala Negruta, mentioned about the future setting of appropriate indicators for monitoring and evaluation of national SDG targets: “This process is a challenge for the national statistical system requiring a much more complex approach in comparison with other development agendas so far. This is because of the big number of targets to be monitored, many of them not even defined at the global level, also because of many data sources to provide the needed and which need a good coordination. The National Bureau of Statistics will need to share this responsibility with other data communities in order to manage the successful data generation for SDGs monitoring, as well as the support of development partners to introduce the innovative approaches into statistics and make it more effective.”

Data revolution can be defined as the analysis and decision-making process for the sustainable development of the society by using the existing data sources, as well as attracting other data sources and promoting free access to these. Data Revolution can be carried out by stakeholders who have responsibilities with regard to data (called “data communities”) and which interact with each other through various institutions, with effective enforcement of laws and policy framework and the use of innovative technologies, thus creating a “data ecosystem”. The products/outputs of the data ecosystem would feed the framework for monitoring and evaluating the progress in SDGs’ implementation.

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