Work shop: Getting the jump on big data and IOT for SDGS.

By: Arianous ICTD.

The Sustainable Development Goals, otherwise known as the Global Goals, build on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Adopted on 1 January 2016, these universally applicable 17 goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, seek to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities, tackle climate change and address a range of social needs like education, health, social protection and job opportunities over the next 15 years.

An overwhelming cause of concern regarding the precursor to the SDGs, the MDGs, is the data unavailability to monitor their progress. Lack of data is not only a problem for global statisticians, but also for people whose needs and demands remain invisible due to lack of quantitative representation of the same. As the new goals (SDGs) cover a wider range of issues it is clear that a far higher level of detail is required. To this effect the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the post-2015 agenda has called for a "data revolution for sustainable development".

The world is experiencing a Data Revolution and a "data deluge." One estimate has it that 90% of the data in the world has been created in the last 2 years. In August 2014 UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked an Independent Expert Advisory Group to make concrete recommendations on bringing about a data revolution in sustainable development. The group has now published the report.In its report A World that Counts, the UN Data Revolution Group defines the data revolution as an explosion in the volume of data, the speed with which data are produced, the number of producers of data, the dissemination of data, and the range of things on which there is data, coming from new technologies such as mobile phones and the “internet of things”, and from other sources, such as qualitative data, citizen-generated data and perceptions data.

The majority of such “data coming from new technologies” is what can be called big data. It is data being generated in real-time, in high velocity and volume, in a variety of forms and formats, and on an increasing range of phenomenon that are being mediated by digital technologies – from governance to human communication. Further, a good part of such big data is not about the content of the phenomenon concerned but about its process – for example, Call Detail Records are generated for each mobile phone call a person makes and it contains data about the process of the call (time, location, duration, recipient, etc.) but not about the content of the call. Big data about various governmental and human processes are becoming a crucial instrument for documenting and monitoring of the same.

The workshop will answer the following question: How can we harness IoT and use Big data to realize the SDGs?

Through an interactive, Multistakeholder dialogue, the workshop will be structured in three parts guided by the following questions:

1.) How is emerging technology such as IoT and Big data driving sustainable growth and what impact could this technology have of the UN 2030 development agenda?

2.) How can we support the back end analytics and systems of IoT including big data and cloud computing and why is this important?

3.) What policy approaches are needed to address the challenges and opportunities IoT will bring to reaching the SDG targets?