Baku, 2 July 2019 – The United Nations Development Programme and the State Statistics Committee of Azerbaijan launched a National Information Portal on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) today recognising the crucial importance of strengthening the statistical capacity in the country.  

Responding to a growing demand for national and international data to track and monitor the progress towards the implementation of the SDGs, the new portal introduces an interactive dashboard, which collects consolidated data on the SDGs from a number of designated government institutions. The platform also uses data from the State Statistics Committee in a way that allows users to explore and visualise data and analyse the progress towards goals, targets and indicators.

The SDGs portal will be used to publish data on sustainable development through textual and graphical illustrations, maps, charts, diagrams, tables and videos. To facilitate greater awareness of the SDGs-related data sources and help the general public use and easily understand complex statistical data, the portal offers an impressive array of data visualisation tools and technics.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, UNDP Resident Representative Mr. Alessandro Fracassetti emphasised the role of data in SDG monitoring pointing out however that: “the road to the achievement of SDGs also goes through concrete programmes in the social, economic and environmental areas and partnerships with private sector, civil society and academia among others.”

An easy-to-use interface of the portal allows users to explore current trends on any given SDG, select targets and their indicators and will serve as the country’s first state-of-the-art point of reference for a wide range of information about the SDGs, including but not limited to statistical data. The portal also contains a collection of legislative acquis pertaining to programmes and initiatives taking place in the area of specific SDGs. It offers access to various data on social, economic, environmental issues, strategic policy measures, research and publications

A single national cloud-based source of information, the Information Portal on the Sustainable Development Goals is now fully operational and available in two languages –Azerbaijani and English. The portal will allow a broad range of users, such as the government, policymakers, the private sector, researchers, academia affiliates, civil society organisations and other interested individuals or entities to track the SDGs implementation process in Azerbaijan.

The establishment of online reporting platforms like this is a critical communication tool required to ensure timely provision of information to the public about the status of progress made on the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, its 17 Global Goals and 169 targets. In Azerbaijan the need to develop a conceptually new SDGs dashboard has been identified in the SDGs Roadmap of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). The new portal is also in line with the requirement of the 2018-2025 State Programme on the development of the official statistics in the Republic of Azerbaijan.

The National Information Portal on the SDGs can be accessed through the official website of the State Statistics Committee sdg.azstat.org

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For media inquiries, please contact Arzu Jafarli, Communications and External Relations Analyst for UNDP in Azerbaijan – arzu.jafarli@undp.org