The United Nations (UN) is developing initiatives that leverage data and analytics to measure and streamline sustainable development goals. While this is work in progress, there are some fundamental questions as to its effectiveness.

Earth Day serves as a reminder of the strain our planet is under. With a number of intertwined environmental and societal challenges open, could data and analytics help get a better understanding of the big picture, determine desirable outcomes, and steer toward them?.

Planet Analytics, as we named this effort, is a very complex task. Not only because of the number and complexity of data and models that would have to be utilized, but also because of the cacophony of actors involved.

The only actor that could, in theory, pull this task off would be the UN. But there are many roadblocks to overcome on the way to getting results.

Just imagine an organization that does not have full stock or control over the data it manages, or a leadership without a mandate and budget to embark full steam on making the organization data-driven. Then multiply this at global scale, and you will begin to see where we’re at now.

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