Members of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (SDSN TReNDS) include:

• Alex Fischer – Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
• Bram Govaerts – Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo (CIMMYT), Texcoco, Mexico
• Calogero Carletto – The World Bank, Washington, DC, USA
• Dilek Fraisl – International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria
• Eduardo Sojo Garza Aldape – Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), Mexico City, Mexico
• Emmanuel Letouzé – Data-Pop Alliance, New York, USA
• Enrico Giovannini – Università di Roma Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy
• Eric Swanson – Open Data Watch (ODW), Washington, DC, USA.
• Francesca Perucci – UN Statistics Division, USA
• Gilberto Câmara ­– Group on Earth Observations, Geneva, Switzerland
• Geoffrey Boulton – University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
• Jeanne Holm – City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles, USA
• Jonathan Glennie – Independent consultant, Colombia
• Laveesh Bhandari – Indicus Foundation, New Delhi, India (Co-chair)
• Lisa Bersales – University of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines
• Molly Jahn – The University of Madison–Wisconsin, Wisconsin, USA
• Philipp Schönrock – Centro de Pensamiento Estratégico Internacional (Cepei), Bogotá, Colombia
• Robert S. Chen – Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University, New York, USA (Co-chair)
• Sabina Alkire – Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
• Samantha Custer – AidData, College of William & Mary, Washington, DC, USA
• Shaida Badiee – Open Data Watch, Washington, DC, USA (Co-chair)
• Steven Ramage – Group on Earth Observations, Geneva, Switzerland
• Tom A. Moultrie – Centre for Actuarial Research, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa and International Union for Scientific Study of Population
• Virginia Murray – Public Health England, London, UK and UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) Scientific and Technical Advisory Group member and vice-chair (2008-2017)
• William Hoffman – World Economic Forum (WEF), New York, USA
• Xiaolan Fu – University of Oxford, UK

The network is supported by Jessica Espey (Director, SDSN TReNDS), Jay Neuner (Communications Manager, SDSN TReNDS), Maryam Rabiee (Manager, SDSN TReNDS), and Hayden Dahmm (Analyst, SDSN TReNDS).

This report was written by Jessica Espey (SDSN TReNDS) with Shaida Badiee (ODW), Hayden Dahmm (SDSN TReNDS), Deirdre Appel (ODW), and Lorenz Noe (ODW). It benefitted from extensive input from other members of SDSN TReNDS including William Hoffman (WEF), Virginia Murray (Public Health England), Dilek Fraisl (IIASA), Lisa Bersales (University of the Philippines), and Bram Govaerts and colleagues (CIMMYT). It also benefited from input from Tom Orrell (DataReady). The report was edited by Jay Neuner (SDSN TReNDS).

The group would like to acknowledge and thank the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for its generous support for the work of SDSN TReNDS, and the Federal Government of Germany for its support for select, data-focused Solutions Initiatives – SDSN projects that aim to promote new technologies, business models, institutional mechanisms, policies, and combinations thereof that can dramatically accelerate progress towards sustainable development. It would also like to acknowledge and thank the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for its support of our work on population monitoring through the POPGRID Data Collaborative.

Counting on The World to Act is the second flagship report from SDSN TReNDS. It builds upon and complements the 2017 version of Counting on the World, which provided a vision for the data for development revolution by laying out suggestions and examples of how the international community and national governments can improve the quality of data and information used to inform policy- and decision-making. A preview of the concepts presented in this report was featured in the July 2019 edition of Nature, in “Sustainable Development Will Falter Without Data” (Espey 2019).

The titles of both TReNDS reports were inspired by the UN Secretary-General’s Independent Expert Advisory Group on a Data Revolution for Sustainable Development, of which five members are now members of SDSN TReNDS. Its report, A World That Counts, was published in 2015. It provided a comprehensive assessment of the state of current data and information systems and the potential offered by the “data revolution” for the monitoring and achievement of sustainable development. It is our intention to build upon that seminal work, providing a more up-to-date, practical pathway to achieve modern data systems that integrate the most promising aspects of the data revolution for sustainable development.