GUIDELINES FOR PREPARING SDG INDICES WITH SDSN

The SDSN secretariat has long-standing expertise in producing rigorous and comparable Indices
and Dashboards to monitor the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In 2015, the
organization released a report to the Secretary General of the United-Nations entitled “Indicators
and a Monitoring Framework for the Sustainable Development Goals: Launching a Data
Revolution” (SDSN, 2015). The report highlighted key principles for effective monitoring of the
SDGs. In addition to the flagship Global SDG Index and Dashboards, the secretariat also works
on other regional and subnational SDG indices. The strength of these indices is that they take
advantage of local data to examine issues particularly relevant to a specific region or country.
These reports are especially useful for determining region-specific or subnational policy priorities.
So far there have been three editions of the Global “SDG Index and Dashboards” (Sachs et al.,
2016, 2017, 2018), two editions of the United States City Index (Prakash et al., 2017; Espey et
al., 2018) and one edition of the Africa Index (The SDG Center for Africa and SDSN, 2018). More
recently an SDG Index and Dashboards for Spanish cities was released by the SDSN Spanish
Network. Ongoing work is also taking place in all continents to expand the coverage of these
monitoring tools and support the implementation of the SDGs at various levels of government.
These tools have been updated and modified over the years based on interactions with a wide
range of experts, particularly the global report, in order to address limitations.
SDSN’s SDG Indices and Dashboards

Based on these interactions and the expertise built over the years, SDSN is proposing four key
criteria that form the core part of the methodology to build effective monitoring and accountability
tools for the SDGs (section 2). The goal of SDSN’s SDG Indices is to assess countries’ distance
to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. To this end, it uses measures of SDG
achievement, official and unofficial, to identify implementation priorities for countries. More
detailed information on the methodology is available in the “SDG Index and Dashboards: Detailed
Methodological paper” (Lafortune et al., 2018).

1. KEY METHODOLOGICAL ELEMENTS

The objective of these reports is to inform policy debates on the SDGs and highlight major data
gaps and limitations. Results should interpretable by a wide audience. As such, our approach
normalizes each indicator on a 0-100 scale using a standard min-max formula. Results can be
interpreted as a percentage towards optimum outcomes. There are four core methodological
elements that we consider as crucial for robust and effective monitoring of the SDGss:
1. Define indicator targets: Each indicator should define what is the "technical optimum". As a
general rule, we encourage our partners to use the targets already defined in the Global Index
when the indicator is the same as one used in the global report. When such a target is not readily
available, partners can use the following decision tree employed by the global index:
a) Use the absolute quantitative thresholds outlined in the SDGs and targets (e.g. gender
equality, zero poverty, universal access to water and sanitation etc.)
b) Where no explicit target is available, set upper bound to universal access or zero
deprivation for the following types of indicators:
i) Measures of extreme poverty (e.g. wasting)
ii) Public service coverage (e.g. contraception)
iii) Access to basic infrastructure (e.g. mobile phone coverage, wastewater
treatment)
c) Where science-based targets exist that must be achieved by 2030 or later use these to
set the 100% upper bound (e.g. zero greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, 100%
sustainable management of fisheries)
d) Where many countries already exceed an SDG target, use the average of top five
performers (e.g. on child mortality)
e) For all other indicators use the average of the top five performers.

Indicator targets should be set in the first edition of a regional or city report and remain largely
stable across editions to measure progress towards pre-defined constant objectives.
2. Establish a clear strategy for dealing with outliers at the bottom of the distribution: To
ensure that results are not skewed or biased by outliers, SDSN uses the 2.5th percentile as
described in the OECD-JRC Handbook for Constructing Composite Indicators1: Other thresholds
can be considered, such as 5%, but a threshold needs to be decided in advance.
3. Aggregate to produce overall results and results at goal level: SDSN strongly suggests
presenting an overall ranking of countries/regions/cities on the SDGs based on a total SDG Index
Score. While we are aware of the sensitivity and difficulties of doing so, we believe it significantly
increases uptake of the report, particularly with the media. We strongly recommend identifying
strengths and weaknesses at the SDG Goal level and generating goal level scores/dashboards.
We do not recommend re-organizing SDG goals into other groupings (such as the “5Ps”, or by
Economic, Social, Environment and Governance goals).
4. Set clear data coverage thresholds for including indicators and entities: This criterion is
meant to reduce missing data bias. Our usual threshold is 80% i.e. for an indicator to be included,
data must be available for 80% of the total number of observations, and for an observation
(cities/regions/countries) to be included it must have a datapoint for 80% of the indicators. These
thresholds may be adapted by the partner institution(s), however, in order to ensure the most
robust results, we do not recommend lowering the threshold below 80%. Any data imputation
method (e.g. modeling, proxies, averages) should be discussed with the SDSN Index team, to
avoid imputing missing data points.

2. PRODUCTION PROCESS

The secretariat has developed a Stata model which, provided that the partner institution provides
us with a specific set of excel files, can quickly produce such indices and dashboards. The
secretariat runs the index machinery for our partners, who in turn are responsible for data
collection, data checks, and other steps in the production which are outlined below.

1
http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/handbookonconstructingcompositeindicatorsmethodologyanduserguide.htm
Based on our experience, there are usually five major steps:
Step 1 - Select indicators. The partner institution is responsible for downloading and
formatting the indicator data sets. In parallel to selecting indicators, the partners will also
choose the set of “observations” or cities/provinces/countries to be examined in their index.
Step 2 - Determine targets for goal achievement on these indicators. The SDSN Index
Team can provide more detailed assistance during this stage of the process. We recommend
that partners have in person meetings with the SDSN Index Team to further this work, either
by coming to the Paris offices or having the secretariat come to their institution. This greatly
facilitates the workflow and understanding of the entire production process.
Step 3 - Review the index and dashboard results in the excel files to ensure the data is
correct and that the results are intuitively logical.
Step 4 - Draft the report that will be included in the report (e.g. introduction, analysis of
results, reaching out to external contributors, methodology).
Step 5 - Contact a design/production company who will then transform the word files and
excel files into pdfs. Prices can vary widely between different design companies, so it is good
practice to get quotes from several before proceeding. Reports can be made available
exclusively online or the partners can choose to print them as well. Data visualization tools
can be developed using the same lay out as those developed for the Global SDG Index and
Dashboards.
Division of responsibilities
SDSN Partner
Provide advice on indicator selection and Identify indicators
thresholds Identify thresholds (SDG targets)
Extract and format excel datasets (based on
template provided by SDSN)
Run the STATA model
Conduct quality checks Review first iterations of SDG Index and
Make final corrections and adjustments Dashboards, check for data errors
Draft report
Coordinate editing and printing of the
reports
Help disseminate the results Disseminate the results

In case such a collaborative process cannot be put in place, the final report should be sent for
comments to the SDSN secretariat at least 3 weeks in advance to confirm that the “SDSN Global”
logo can be displayed on the cover of the report. This is to ensure some degree of consistency
in the methodology and results across SDG Index and Dashboards report.
3. GENERIC DISCLAIMER
All reports should include the following disclaimer:
“The views expressed in this report do not reflect the views of any organizations, agency or
programme of the United Nations. It has been prepared by the team of independent experts of
the SDSN [Add name of the SDSN Network]. The results presented in this report may not
represent the views of the SDSN secretariat and members of the SDSN Leadership Council.”
REFERENCES

Espey, J., H. Dahmm, and L. Manderino (2018), “Leaving No U.S. City Behind: The U.S. cities
sustainable development goals index,” Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
Lafortune, G., G. Fuller, J. Moreno, G. Schmidt-Traub, and C. Kroll (2018), SDG Index and
Dashboards: Detailed Methodological paper, Sustainable Development Solutions
Network.
Prakash, M., K. Teksoz, J. Espey, J.D. Sachs, and M. Shank (2017), “Achieving a Sustainable
America. The U.S. Cities Sustainable Development Goals Index. Draft for public
consultation,” Sustainable Development Solutions Network, New York.
Sachs, J., G. Schmidt-Traub, and D. Durand-Delacre (2016), “Preliminary Sustainable
Development Goal (SDG) Index and Dashboards,” Sustainable Development Solutions
Network, New York.
Sachs, J., G. Schmidt-Traub, C. Kroll, D. Durand-Delacre, and K. Teksoz (2017), “SDG Index
and Dashboards Report 2017. Global Responsibilities - International Spillovers in
Achieving the Goals,” Bertelsmann Stiftung and Sustainable Development Solutions
Network, Gütersloh and New York.
Sachs, J., G. Schmidt-Traub, C. Kroll, G. Lafortune, and G. Fuller (2018), SDG Index and
Dashboards Report 2018. New York: Bertelsmann Stiftung and Sustainable
Development Solutions Network (SDSN)., Bertelsmann Stiftung and Sustainable
Development Solutions Network (SDSN)., New-York.
SDSN (2015), “Indicators and a Monitoring Framework for Sustainable Development Goals:
Launching a data revolution for the SDGs,” Sustainable Development Solutions
Network, Paris and New York.
The SDG Center for Africa, and SDSN (2018), “Africa SDG Index and Dashboards Report
2018,” Kigali and New York.