Tracking development progress Keeping governments and citizens
informed At the start of the 15-year journey towards the
Millennium Development Goals (2000–2015), the absence of
relevant and reliable statistical benchmarks was the norm rather
than the exception in most Pacific Islands Countries. Virtually
no MDG resources were invested in regular and ongoing collection
of basic development statistics or in developing indicators, so
how was progress to be measured? It is a different story in 2013
as the end of the MDG journey approaches. The Secretariat of the
Pacific Community (SPC), with generous financial assistance from
Aus-AID, has invested huge efforts in working with member
countries to first develop its National Minimum Development
Indicator database and expand the system’s content and
functionality to also include all population-based MDG
indicators. As Dr Gerald Haberkorn, Director of SPC’s Statistics
for Development Division, says: ‘We’ve designed the NMDI
database as a ‘one-stop info-shop’ to provid