SDG Monitoring and Evaluation Tools for Local Governments

Background

In order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), various efforts are underway in countries around the world. SDG management is an indispensable perspective for local and regional governments and companies in Japan. On the other hand, a mechanism of collecting, evaluating and visualizing information and data as a basis of SDG management has yet to be established at the local and regional levels with Japanese local context. Thus, it is an urgent task for local and regional governments to set up such a system of monitoring and evaluation in order to show the results of planning and implementation so far to citizens, companies and other stakeholders in order to accelerate further efforts towards the SDGs in their respective cities and regions. Against this backdrop, the United Nations Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD) has launched a project to develop a monitoring-and-evaluation tool package in collaboration with local governments and private companies that are already committed to the SDGs, in particular in Chubu, Japan. The project has been registered as an SDG Acceleration Action.

Goal and Objectives

The project aims at developing the package of monitoring and evaluation tools that responds to the unique situation in each city and region in Japan while making them internationally comparable one by combining the technologies and expertise owned by project partners. By combining the information and statistical data originally owned by local and regional governments together with the data obtained through participatory data-collection technologies, the tool package would evaluate the current status of each local and regional governments' efforts and the progress so far in achieving the SDGs, and also provide a basic guideline for collecting and monitoring data and information.

Partners

Nagoya City Government
Toyota City Government
Private Sector (Toppan Printing Co., Ltd., Esri Japan Corporation. and Nippon Engineering Consultants Co., Ltd.)

SDG Monitoring Handbooks and Dashboards

UNCRD has developed the package of SDGs monitoring and evaluation tools (Governance and Achievement) that responds to the unique situation in each city and region while making them internationally comparable one by combining the technologies and expertise owned by project partners.

• SDG Monitoring Dashboards (covering all the 47 prefectures in Japan)
• Handbook for SDG Monitoring by Local Governments (Part A Evaluating the Achievement of SDG Local Actions) in English (issued without formal editing)
• Handbook for SDG Monitoring by Local Governments (Part B Building Institutional Mechanisms and Managing Progress towards SDGs by Local Government) in English (issued without formal editing)

HALFWAY TO 2030

Halfway to 2030: Japan SDG Local and Regional Report 2023

Activities and Events

• Held a workshop online on 7 July 2020 with collaboration of partner local governments and companies with 60 participants.
• The project has been selected and registered after, a review by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), as an SDG Acceleration Action.
• Participated in a workshop on Voluntary Local Review Series: Monitoring, data and indicators held by Division for Sustainable Development Goals of UN DESA on 20 January 2021 to deliver a presentation on Monitoring and Evaluation Tools for SDG Local Actions in Chubu, Japan.
• Organized a webinar on "SDG Management, Monitoring and Information Dissemination" on 15-21 February 2021 with the total number of video view of 250.
• Released "Handbook for SDG Monitoring by Local Governments (Part A Evaluating the Achievement of SDG Local Actions)" in English (issued without formal editing) in July 2021.

Expected Outputs and Impact

The results of monitoring and evaluation will not only be compiled in a report for reviewing on the annual basis but also be visualized online, for example in a form of dashboard, that can be viewed and referred by various stakeholders, including the private sector, the academia and citizens. Also as project output, a report of the basic guideline for collecting and monitoring data compiled with case studies of Nagoya and Toyota Cities using these tools will be released to demonstrate the usefulness of the tool package, and then the report would also be utilized to support other local and regional governments in Japan and other countries in their efforts to achieve the SDGs. The developed package would enable local and regional governments to evaluate and visualize the outputs and outcomes of their activities and projects towards the SDGs and provide feedback for improvement for future actions. It is expected that more and more local and regional governments, which are interested in monitoring and evaluation of local SDG actions and/or voluntary local review (VLR), will use the tools to effectively promote their own initiatives and projects while learning peer-to-peer so that their actions towards SDGs would be further accelerated.

For details of the project, the project document is available here.

The project has been registered as an SDG Acceleration Action.