World Bank Knowledge for Change Program – Full Proposal Templet Basic Data: Title Monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals: Identification, Data, and Dissemination Linked Project ID (if available) Product Line RA Applied Amount ($) 150,000 Est. Project Period 11/15/2018 -06/15/2021 Team Leader(s) Hai-Anh Dang (TTL); Managing Unit DECSU Umar Serajuddin (co- TTL) Contributing unit(s) DECDD, GEDGE, GWA08 Funding Window Innovation in Data Production, Analysis and Dissemination Regions/Countries World General: 1. What is the Development Objective (or main objective) of this Grant? The World Bank is currently responsible for monitoring the progress of 20 indicators of the 230 or so Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) indicators, and involved in the production of an extended group of 23 additional indicators. The main objective of this work is to conduct research on the key 20 SDG indicators that the World Bank is in charge of, and to provide guidance for further improvement on data collection and analysis. We aim to improve and refine the list of these indicators to provide a more useful assessment, together with a dissemination tool that can better serve the Bank’s twin goals (both of which are prominent SDG targets as well). More specifically, our proposed work aims to i) examine the 20 indicators that the Bank are currently responsible for, and investigate to what extent these indicators can form a subset that represent the 232 indicators ii) identify a core group of indicators that can help track the progress of all the 232 indicators, which provides insights on potential changes and modifications to the 20 indicators the Bank is responsible for iii) employ relevant statistical methods to construct a richer and more complete database of this core group of indicators that enables tracking a country’s SDG progress over time. 2. Summary description of Grant financed activities Page 1 of 24 World Bank Knowledge for Change Program – Full Proposal Templet We propose two sets of activities under this Grant. The first set of activities conducts research on the Bank’s current list of SDG indicators. We will study a number of challenges facing the construction and monitoring of the Bank’s indicators, and all the SDG indicators in general. These challenges consist of the following i) the extent that the current indicators the Bank is responsible for represents all the SDG indicators ii) whether we can identify a core group of indicators that allows useful analysis and facilitates data collection efforts iii) how we interpret the progress of the SDG indicators, and iv) the best-practices solutions to address the issue of missing values. The second set of activities focuses on capacity building and dissemination. In particular, we will disseminate the outputs obtained in the first set of activities above in a variety of outlets, including ▪ policy discussions with our counterparts who are in charge of monitoring the SDGs at the United Nations and other international organizations ▪ professional conferences and academic seminars related to the SDGs ▪ World Bank products on the SDGs that we are in charge of, including the World Bank’s SDG Atlas and websites We will also actively engage in social media, including writing blog posts, to further disseminate our results and build capacity on a world-wide, wholesale basis. One particular blog that we will contribute posts to is the Open Data Blog, which is currently the most read blog of the World Bank. 3. What are the main risks related to the Grant financed activity? Are there any potential conflicts of interest for the Bank? How will these risks/conflicts be monitored and managed? There are minimal risks associated with the proposed activities. The main source of risk is that there are currently a number of missing values for the SDG indicators. This is a data challenge that will need to be satisfactorily solved for better monitoring of the trends of the indicators over time. But this issue of missing values is in fact one of the research questions that we propose to address under this Grant. We will minimize this risk by applying the latest analytical techniques in the relevant statistical and economic literatures. We will also obtain advice from our advisors and other leading experts in academia for further improvement. 4. (Optional question) What can/has been done to find an alternative source of financing, i.e. instead of a Bank administered Grant? In addition to the proposed Grant financing, we have secured some additional fund, which include staff time of $50,000 from the Bank’s budget (BB). KCPIII Specific: 1. How does (do) the objective(s) of this proposal align with the World Bank Group’s twin goals? What are the key thematic research questions being addressed in this research? Page 2 of 24 World Bank Knowledge for Change Program – Full Proposal Templet In September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly formally adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which is expected to guide global action over the next 15 years. Consisting of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 associated targets, this new agenda builds on the achievements of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but is far wider in scope and ambition. To monitor these 169 targets, 232 official indicators have now been selected. The implementation of the SDGs will require a solid monitoring framework and a high-quality database of indicators to inform policy and ensure accountability of stakeholders. However, different from the MDGs, the more ambitious SDGs include very diverse measures of welfare outcomes. In particular, the themes of the SDGs broadly cover “people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership”, and the targets associated with these themes are even more general. The World Bank is directly responsible for monitoring the progress of 20 indicators of these 232 indicators (see Table 1), and involved in the production of an extended group of 23 additional indicators. The main objective of this work is to conduct research on the 20 indicators that the Bank are currently responsible for, and to provide guidance for further improvement on data collection and analysis. We aim to improve the list of these indicators to provide a more useful assessment and monitoring tool that can better serve the Bank’s twin goals. More specifically, our proposed work aims to i) examine the 20 indicators that the Bank are currently responsible for, and investigate whether, and to what extent, these indicators can form a subset that represent the 232 indicators ii) identify a core group of indicators that can help track the progress of all the 232 indicators, which provides insights on potential changes and modifications to the 20 indicators the Bank is responsible for iii) employ relevant statistical methods to construct a complete database of this core group of indicators that enables the tracking of a country’s SDG progress over time. Our proposed research for tracking the SDGs is closely linked to the Bank’s twin goals and key operational priorities. In particular, the SDGs provide broader measures of welfare outcomes that include and place higher priority on the Bank’s twin goals. Specifically, the very first target of the first SDG goal on poverty calls for eliminating poverty by 2030 as currently defined by the $1.90 a day line (target 1.1). Moreover, the first target of the tenth SDG goal on inequality is related to the Bank’s goal of boosting shared prosperity, with the specification that the bottom 40 grow faster than the average (target 10.1). The Bank is, in fact, the organization responsible for providing estimates for these two targets. More generally, our proposed work on the SDGs is consistent with the strong focus at other international organizations, as well as at the country level, that employs the SDGs framework for policy discourses. 2. Describe analytic design & methodology. Elaborate on hypotheses, conceptual framework, data (survey design if applicable). We describe below two main activities that we propose to implement under this Grant, together with more specific research questions in this Section. Page 3 of 24 World Bank Knowledge for Change Program – Full Proposal Templet 1. Research on the Bank’s current list of SDG indicators and constructing a core group of indicators We propose to investigate a number of issues surrounding the construction of the SDG indicators in general, and the Bank’s SDG indicators in particular. Below is a brief discussion of some key issues. i. To what extent does the current Bank’s selection of indicators represent all the SDG indicators? Even though 232 indicators have now officially been selected to monitor the 169 SDG targets, tracking all these indicators presents no small challenge for both technical reasons (i.e., many indicators have missing values) and logistical reasons (i.e., it is a resources-consuming process to put together a high-quality database on this large number of indicators over time). The selection process of the 20 core indicators is based on the Bank’s expertise as well as the data that the Bank can mobilize. While this process results in a relatively more manageable database of indicators of high quality, as yet it is unclear to what extent these 20 indicators can represent all the SDG indicators. And it is also unclear which aspects of the SDGs that these indicators can better capture. Put differently, what can we say about the general progress with the SDGs if we are to look only at these 20 indicators that the Bank can update? In a bad-case scenario, if these current 20 indicators offer a biased picture of the SDGs, then how biased is this picture (e.g., too much focus on economic growth rather than the environment)? The insights into these questions will have much operational relevance to the Bank in general as a leading organization on implementing the SDG goals, and DECDG in particular as the department that coordinating with other global practices within the Bank to produce and curate data on the Bank’s list of SDG indicators.