Editor’s Note:
The continuing process of intergovernmental negotiations and agency action to refine and affirm the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to 2030 reached important milestones over the last 30 days. One key milestone was the annual meeting of the UN Statistical Commission, the body charged with developing the “indicator framework” which will include the specific, measurable performance areas that will support the current 17 Goals and 150+ Targets of the SDGs.

The UN Statistical Commission has just circulated the call for comments below with a 10-day window for responses (due 26 April 2015). This call is posted on the website of the UN Division for Sustainable Development http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/. For reference, the roadmap for this process of developing and refining the indicator framework is discussed in “V. The Way Forward” excerpt below from the referenced Technical Report.

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Comments sought on Technical Report on post-2015 indicators
17 Apr 2015 – At the beginning of the third session of the intergovernmental negotiations on a post-2015 development agenda, held from 23-27 March at UN Headquarters in New York, a technical report was presented by the Chair of the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC) on the process to develop indicators for the new agenda. It contained a preliminary set of 304 indicators as a “point of departure” for further work. Major Groups and other Stakeholders have been invited to contribute their views and assessment of the draft indicators by completing an online document.

All inputs should be received by 26 April. A synthesis report and associated compilation document of inputs will be submitted to the Secretariat of the Inter-agency and Expert Group on the Sustainable Development Goals (IAEG) working on indicators.

Discussions at the March post-2015 session
Next to discussing the Technical Report and the Inter-agency and Expert Group on the Sustainable Development Goals (IAEG), Delegations covered a whole range of issues at the March post-2015 session, focussing on goals, targets and indicators, and a number of procedural matters.

Member States shared what they are already doing to prepare for implementing the new agenda and the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Many explained how they have been working to align and harmonize their own national development plans and sustainable development strategies with the SDGs, and on how this new agenda has stimulated a national dialogue across ministries and offices within the government as well as among all stakeholders.

Six possible themes for the interactive dialogues at the September Summit proposed by the Co-Facilitators, Ambassador David Donoghue, Permanent Representative of Ireland to the UN, and Ambassador Macharia Kamau, Permanent Representative of Kenya to the UN, were also discussed. A revised proposal based on the feedback received at the March meeting will be circulated. The Co-Facilitators also asked for feedback on their proposed programme for a Joint Session between the Financing for Development and Post-2015 processes and a revised draft programme has now been published.

To facilitate the discussion on goals and targets, the Co-Facilitators distributed a short document on the first day of the March session, containing suggestions for possible technical adjustments to 19 targets based on the feedback from the UN System Technical Support Team.
There were diverging views regarding this exercise. The Co-Facilitators will share a revised version of the suggestions in time for the May session of the post-2015 negotiations.

An interactive dialogue with Major Groups and other Stakeholders took place on Wednesday morning. The need for data disaggregation by all vulnerable groups as key to ensuring no one is left behind was one of the issues highlighted at this meeting.
V. The way forward
11. The road map endorsed by the Statistical Commission envisages the development by July 2015, of a first note on possible global and universal indicators and an indicator
framework. This note is expected to contain the proposed criteria for the selection of indicators for global monitoring. Keeping in view the spirit of the discussion at the
Commission, it is suggested that the intergovernmental negotiations give broad political guidance for the future work of the Statistical Commission for the development of a proposal for a global indicator framework. By December 2015, the IEAG-SDGs will provide a proposal of global and universal indicators and an indicator framework for consideration by the Statistical Commission at its forty-seventh session in March 2016. The proposal will then be submitted to the further intergovernmental process.