Transcript No Slide Title - United Nations Economic Commission for Europe

WHICH POLICY FRAMEWORKS MATTER AND HOW TO
DESCRIBE THEM:
INDICATORS LINKING THE LISBON STRATEGY,
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
AND THE MDGs
Supporting slides for the invited paper submitted by Statistical
Office of Estonia
STATISTICAL COMMISSION and ECONOMIC COMMISSION
FOR EUROPE
CONFERENCE OF EUROPEAN STATISTICIANS
Fifty-third plenary session
(Geneva, 13-15 June 2005)
The Dashboard: Working with complex indicator sets
The Dashboard tool, developed by IISD’s “Consultative Group on Sustainable Development Indices” is
an attempt to put indicators at the service of democracy.
A car driver or a pilot, they all have a dashboard in front of them, with an impressing amount of
instruments that help them to take their decisions. Likewise, the “captains” of nations need the tools to
steer our modern societies. In a participatory democracy, citizens want to “look over the shoulder of
the captain”, so that they can understand the decisions of their governments.
Currently, only a handful of indicators, namely the rates of GDP growth, unemployment and inflation,
are communicated to the public. Judging government performance with three indicators is like
travelling with a captain who tells passengers “as long as there is fuel on board, and the compass
points into the right direction, everything is OK”.
Complexity of decision-making in the 21st Century needs more adequate decision support tools!
The Dashboard presents sets of indicators in a simple format based on three principles:
1.the size of a segment reflects the relative importance
of the issue described by the indicator;
2.a colour code signals performance relative to others:
green means “good”, red means “bad”;
3.the central circle (PPI, Policy Performance Index)
summarizes the information of the component
indicators
This “language” may seem a straight-jacket for many
indicators; however, it is the only way to present very
heterogenous indicators in a common format.
E n vir on m en t
E c on om y
20%
45%
P PI
35%
S oc ial
C ar e
Pol icy v alua ti on:
v ery go od
g ood
ok
me dium
b ad
v ery ba d
cri ti cal
The main, all panels view of the dashboard: the composition of the adapted UN CSD indicator set, based
on the Agenda 21 structure.
Millenium Development Goals, Target 4: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary
education preferably by 2005 and to all levels of education no later than 2015.
A simple dashboard view: Y-axis shows the number of points; X-axis shows the respective rank.
The points are calculated as follows: 1000*(x-worst)/(best-worst).
MDG theme "Gender equality and empowerment of women“ ranking of the countries on the
world level ( for 165 countries in database). On the top is Sweden and the bottom is Chad. One could move
the mouse into the map and press Z to zoom in. The score of the index is the weighted average of the
component indicators.
Dashboard: Linkage analysis
How is "Malaria prevalence" linked to "Malaria deaths"? Burkina Faso scores "excellent" for "Malaria
prevalence " and "serious" for Malaria deaths. In contrast, Botswana gets a "critical" for "Malaria prevalence"
and "excellent" for Malaria deaths.
Linkage Analysis:
The example of CO2 emissions vs. GDP per capita (UN CSD set)
With just one mouse click, the most relevant correlations between the indicators could be displayed. There
is a “negative” correlation between CO2 emissions and income. This example could serve also as an
illustration for the trade-offs between economy and environment sphere.
Dashboard on regional level: environmental indicators on local government level
in Estonia