A Blockchain Powered Solution to Track the SDGs

The 73rd United Nations General Assembly convened last week in New York. With all member states of the United Nations (UN) represented, it would have been a strategic time to address and rethink the reporting and management of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which currently fails to provide real-time, verified updates on projects, and initiatives being undertaken.

Blockchain technology could be harnessed to create a more transparent, efficient, and secure SDG management system.

Flawed System

Currently the UN uses online interactive dashboards to showcase global progress in areas of critical importance for humanity and the planet. While it visualizes progress towards these goals, the dashboards lack an important element — the ability to provide verified and real-time updates on projects and initiatives undertaken. Organizations working at the regional, national, and international levels need to be able to directly feed reporting data into a consolidated platform that tracks individual projects and how their success metrics map to corresponding SDGs. Siloed operations tackling the same issues waste resources and prevent organizations and individuals from maximizing expertise and best practices to create sustainable change.

Integrating an Agile Digital Ecosystem

A unified, real-time reporting system could break down silos between SDG stakeholders and encourage interaction and relevant data sharing. To pursue this system, the UN would need to determine stakeholders from each country who should have access to the ecosystem. These stakeholders would be able to upload information about projects being undertaken, and the progress that they are making on specific SDGs. The ability to analyze clear and objective metrics to determine the success of a project will create real value by enabling other organizations to quickly adopt best practices and cooperate towards shared SDGs.

A Blockchain-Powered Solution

A blockchain powered global ledger would be able to provide transparent, efficient, and secure reporting of SDGs. It would also create a platform that provides project execution best practices and encourage cross-sector and cross-country collaboration on initiatives.

Improve Transparency and Accountability

The General Assembly provides a space for political leaders to assess projects undertaken and offer guidance on implementation. However, closed door meetings seldom leverage the full collective power of the public, private and governmental sectors effectively. Although the UN provides stakeholders with annual progress assessments, the updates are neither detailed nor often enough to assess success of specific projects or investments. Moreover, burdensome bureaucratic obstacles significantly delay or altogether prevent countries from publishing their 2030 SDG data.

Blockchain Solution:

• Anyone with internet access could view the full record of a public blockchain, making it nearly impossible to hide transactions and relatively easy for third parties to track who has added data entries. However, access privileges should be well thought out and provided to the private, public, and governmental voices who can add relevant data onto to the blockchain.
• Tracking the ownership of uploaded data would become easier and more efficient. Differentiated access would authorize only approved entities to publish data to the blockchain, and cryptographic hashing ensures that the data received is valid.

Enhance Efficiencies

Meaningful reviews depend largely on adequate technical monitoring capacities to provide timely evidence, detect and mitigate risks, and inform course corrections. Currently, there is a heavy reliance on National Statistics Offices (NSO) around the world to collect and synthesize data, as well as to support planning and national development processes. This means that NSOs are often overworked and do not always have access to the data that they need.

Blockchain Solution:

• Collecting and storing data would become more efficient by increasing the number of access points, reducing data bottlenecks that impede national development processes.
• Distributed data storage between different geographic locations improves the resiliency of the system by removing single points of failure, particularly in countries with underdeveloped infrastructure or conflict zones.
• A consolidated reporting ecosystem would reduce the need for manual data entry in each separate system — reducing human error and relieving pressure on NSO’s.

Boost Security & Data Integrity

Security plays a central role in ensuring that information about SDG progress will not be modified or erased, which in turn also protects the integrity of data. A challenge with the current system is the credibility of data. Data can easily be manipulated or ​corrupted at any stage of input, from the minute NSOs collect information to when reports are presented at the High Level Political Forum. The UN currently makes use of a centralized system that can be prone to online attacks from malicious third-parties, which could result in loss or manipulation of data.

Blockchain Solution:

• Timestamped, append-only entries reduce the likelihood of inaccurate or outdated data and preserves the integrity of the blockchain.
• Data cannot be corrupted easily because it is verified at every block in the chain and spreads across a network of nodes to prevent manipulation of a single database. Additionally, nodes on the blockchain have geographic and processing autonomy. As such, if any single node is attacked, goes offline, or becomes inaccessible, access to redundancies stored on each independent computer provides data loss insurance.

Conclusion

A blockchain based reporting system for the SDGs would not only create transparency and accountability, but also ensure that individuals operating across different sectors can work in tandem to accomplish goals more efficiently. This would unlock the ability for cross-country and cross-industry partnerships that are often stifled due to simple lack of information and communication. Imagine being able to interact with an interface that provides live, verified updates on SDG goals, based on effective strategies being undertaken across the world. The advantage of using blockchain is that it is not fraught with political, social, and economic underpinnings. Instead, it can be used to create an ecosystem that provides opportunities for groups of individuals who are often forgotten when dealing with the broader attainment of the SDGs.

Strengthening the process of information sharing between institutions and the public is an inherent component of blockchain technology. By allowing individuals to observe the progression of impact generated in various sectors and regions of the world in real time, the credibility of the SDGs as an apparatus for delivering change can be reinforced. This will galvanize multilateral efforts to help achieve the SDGs and create a more egalitarian and sustainable global society.

The UN has an opportunity to revolutionize the way in which we tackle the SDGs, and blockchain technology might just be the solution to the problem.