SDG and development monitoring: connecting national goals with daily decisions
A national development plan sets goals for better health, education, livelihoods, and public services. Turning those goals into decisions requires information that local teams can collect, check, and use. The same records should help a district manager address a service gap and help a ministry understand progress.
Solstice is a free data platform for governments and development organizations. It brings field data, site records, maps, dashboards, and work processes together. Solstice Institute helps organizations build systems they can maintain, from a program monitoring system to a shared management information system across agencies.
Our experience with national water monitoring offers a practical starting point for broader development monitoring: connect reporting with the work that keeps information current.
Start with the decisions behind the indicators
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a shared framework for tracking development. The UN global indicator framework is complemented by national and regional indicators. A useful monitoring system connects those measures to the decisions an agency actually makes.
Which communities need investment? Which facilities are missing essential services? Where has an inspection identified a problem, and who is responsible for resolving it? Answering these questions requires records that remain useful between reporting deadlines.
Planning ministries, sector agencies, statistics offices, local governments, and development partners each need different views of the evidence. Agreeing on definitions and responsibilities lets them use shared information without requiring everyone to perform the same job.
Keep a history of places, services, and activities
A survey captures conditions at a point in time. A development monitoring system also needs to show what changed. Stable records for facilities, communities, projects, or assets make it possible to connect later visits and actions to the same place.
The following are illustrative applications of this approach, rather than claims about specific Solstice deployments:
Health: maintain facility records, document service availability, and follow up on inspection findings.
Education: track school infrastructure, accessibility, and service conditions through repeated assessments.
Agriculture and livelihoods: connect project activities with participating communities and follow-up observations.
Climate and disaster risk: bring local observations, infrastructure records, and external environmental data into a shared geographic view.
Development programs: compare planned activities with verified completion and examine how results differ across locations.
A shared facility record can support several departments. Each team retains responsibility for its own information, while agreed identifiers reduce duplicate records and make comparison possible.
Make each reported figure explainable
Before building a dashboard, define each indicator: what it measures, its source, the population or facilities it covers, the reporting period, and the calculation. Record who checks the data and how often it should be updated.
Solstice supports standardized questionnaires, validation rules, review and approval, and custom indicator calculations. Maps and dashboards can summarize records by geography and other collected characteristics. Teams still need to agree which comparisons are valid and whether the underlying data are complete.
For example, the share of inspected schools meeting a service standard describes the schools inspected. It should not be presented as the share of all schools unless the coverage or sampling method supports that conclusion. Show missing reports and older observations so readers can judge the result.
Operational records can contribute to SDG monitoring, but a dashboard does not make a figure an official SDG statistic. Use the relevant indicator definitions and methods, and work with the responsible statistical and sector authorities. Representative surveys and other established sources remain necessary where the measure requires them.
Collect data where the work happens
Field teams can use Solstice on Android and iOS devices without an internet connection. Records sync when connectivity returns. Forms can capture locations, photos, and structured responses, with checks that help staff identify errors during collection.
Use this to establish a repeatable process: collect the observation, review it, update the relevant record, and make it available to the people who need it. A district team should be able to use the information it submits, including seeing which records need correction or follow-up.
Connect existing systems
Development data already live in sector systems, spreadsheets, geographic databases, and partner reporting tools. A shared monitoring system needs a clear way to bring the relevant information together.
Solstice supports tabular and spatial imports, a REST API, and integration tools for exchanging data with other platforms. Teams can use Solstice maps and dashboards or connect data to tools such as Power BI and Tableau.
For each connection, agree which system holds the authoritative record, how identifiers match, and when updates occur. Check external systems' access requirements and data structures during design. Keep specialist systems where they serve their purpose, and exchange the information needed for joint decisions.
Connect findings with action
A monitoring system should help a team respond when it finds a problem. Solstice Workflows can organize stages, roles, reviews, and follow-up around a defined process.
Consider a facility inspection that identifies damaged infrastructure. An illustrative process would record the finding, assign responsibility, document the response, and verify completion. Managers could examine outstanding work alongside the facility's inspection history.
The agency must decide who can approve an action and what evidence is sufficient to close it. Recording a task as complete is useful only when completion has an agreed meaning.
Lessons from government systems
mWater and Solstice share the same underlying platform. Our water-sector work provides documented experience in government data management; it does not establish results across every development sector.
In Uganda, the RUMIS project brought legacy water data together and established procedures for continued collection and performance monitoring. Its published account describes how shared records support government access and field collection.
The Papua New Guinea national WaSH system account describes consultation, agreed indicators, and implementation responsibilities. These design questions also matter when several sectors contribute to a development monitoring system.
In Haiti, work with the national water and sanitation authority DINEPA established standardized utility reporting on infrastructure, customers, and financial performance. The broader lesson is to define common records while making reporting useful to the organizations that maintain them.
Plan for ownership and continued use
Government and partner organizations retain ownership of their data and control access. Solstice provides organizational roles, permissions, and public, protected, or private sharing options. Public reporting should use information suitable for release, with access to sensitive records restricted.
Standard platform use is free. Paid technical services and advanced support are available through Stellar. Implementation still requires resources for staff time, training, devices, connectivity, and continued data collection. Include these costs and responsibilities in the plan from the beginning.
Start with a defined set of decisions, records, and users. Test the system through a full collection, review, and management cycle. Train the people who will administer it, document the process, and expand when the first version is working.
Solstice Institute's aim is a system the responsible team can maintain and adapt. Read about our approach to government systems, contact us about your monitoring needs, or start using Solstice.
Adapted from mWater's National water monitoring software for governments for a broader development audience.