Mapping by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Oslo Governance Resource Centre in 2003 identified a wide range of governance indicators that have been developed and used by organisations. This guide brings some of them together to offer readers a user-friendly overview of indicators that are accessible on the internet.
The document is aimed at governance practitioners in UNDP country offices and other organisations and individuals working on governance and development. It is a snapshot of the indicator sources surveyed in the mapping. As such, it is not an exhaustive list, but is still one of the most extensive guides published. The main section contains 52 one-page international indicator sources. The following section provides seven additional sources that contain useful information on sample and forthcoming indicators, including the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) Governance Report. The main criteria for selecting sources were accessibility through the internet and relevance to one or more UNDP focus areas (‘service lines’) in democratic governance. An index provides an overview of the indicators according to different categories: organisation name, UNDP governance service lines, methodology, geographical coverage and type of indicators.
The section on key indicator sources includes institutions such as Freedom House, the Global Barometer Survey Network, the Economist Intelligence Unit and Transparency International. It also covers many multilateral organisations and academic sources. For each, the following information is provided:
- Name of the organisation primarily responsible for producing the indicators, and name of the source, publication associated with the index, or index itself.
- Timeline. This refers to the available time series for the indicators.
- UNDP governance service lines. Sources are broken down along these lines, for example, electoral systems and processes, or justice and human rights. They are assessed as less relevant, relevant or highly relevant.
- Methodology. The principle methodology is classified as quantitative, qualitative or a combination. Where available, additional information on the method is also supplied.
- Geographical coverage, type of indicators (political, social, economic etc.) and internet address.
- Comments. This section provides descriptive comments not captured in the other categories and comments on the methodological approach and its relevance to UNDP governance practice.
The source guide is intended to provoke discussion on what kinds of indicators are of practical use for those engaged in democratic governance, and to contribute to their development. The UNDP position is that:
- While many sources in the guide can assist and enhance UNDP policy and programming, a significant weakness is the lack of pro-poor and pro-gender perspectives.
- A key challenge is to assist developing countries to publish disaggregated data on governance so that stakeholders can identify where change is needed, particularly to improve the welfare of marginalised groups.
- The Bureau for Development Policy has begun developing a set of non-ranking governance indicators for use in developing countries.
- One way to enable this is to produce a set of core indicators complemented by a set of ‘satellite’ indicators to reflect country and regional contexts.
- These are intended to be useful to national stakeholders as a tool for strengthening the responsiveness of institutions and processes to the needs of ordinary citizens, especially women and the poor.
