Driving action on the SDGs – UKSSD workshop
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) tell us what the UK should be aspiring to by 2030. The UK Stakeholders for Sustainable Development (UKSSD) ‘Measuring up’ report provides the low-down on the current state of play on the UK’s performance on the SDGs. It exposed a huge gap that needs to be bridged between the curernt situation and what we should be aiming for.
On 28th September, the UK Open Government Network (OGN) joined UKSSD at its half-day workshop to explore the ideas and activity areas that partners would like to develop and focus on following the launch of the ‘Measuring up’ report. The OGN participated in the development, research and drafting of the chapter on SDG16 in Measuring up.
The workshop
The OGN joined other organisations to identify specific activities or projects to help drive action on the SDGs in the UK, to find opportunities to contribute to these potential projects, and build connections.
At the workshop, we addressed the question: How might we unlock funding to bring together partners to create multi-stakeholder partnerships which create a sustained and positive cycle of change that achieves the other 16 SDGs?
After defining what it is we want to achieve, most of the workshop was spent looking at the impact we want to make and about how we might do so. Participants at the workshop explored the potential constraints and questioned earlier ideas. The discussion was focused around:
- The need to map out existing partnerships among UKSSD partners, the wider network and across different sectors in the UK and internationally, to to build a picture of what best practice looks like, in order to draw out principles and criteria for measuring successful collaboration.
- After mapping out what best practice looked like, it would be necessary to build funding around developing such partnerships.
- Then finally, such funding would need to be granted out to prototype various approaches to multi-stakeholder partnerships which can adapt to sectors and contexts. It would also be necessary to monitor the implementation of multi-stakeholder partnerships to ensure it achieves the progression of the SDGs.
Following this workshop, the OGN will continue to work with UKSSD and partners to see where to take action next to continue pushing for progress on the SDGs, particularly in fostering and promoting multi-stakeholder partnerships like the Open Government Partnership process.