The UN Secretary General’s Independent Expert Advisory Group  (IEAG) on the Data Revolution plans to launch its final report tomorrow (6 Nov).

The UN Secretary General set up IEAG to advise on data revolution for his synthesis report ahead of the intergovernmental negotiations leading to the adoption of the Post-2015 Development Agenda. The final report will be published tomorrow.

We’ve been following the work of the IEAG closely, and earlier this month, we submitted our thoughts on what we wanted to see in the report.

Last week, we had a chance to see the first draft.

We hope the final report will provide a clearer narrative around what the data revolution involves. The graph below shows what we asked for in our submission versus what we saw in the draft.

This report may not be the be all and end all of the data revolution, but it will feed into the Post-2015 Development Agenda synthesis report, which will be a key input of  the negotiations on the Post-2015 Goals and the Finance for Development Summit in September and July 2015 respectively.It is fair to say that civil society did not have much time to comment on the draft, and it was put together quickly. As such, I’d expect the draft and final that is published tomorrow to be much different.

It would be a shame to let this report frame the conversation around the data revolution if it’s not good enough. We need continue to ensure transparency and accountability remains high on the priority list as part of that.