Vienna, Austria, 16-17 April 2024 – Quality infrastructure (QI) plays a vital role in sustainable development as it drives economic growth, fosters social inclusion, enhances environmental resilience, and ensures long-term prosperity for present and future generations. Being able to measure the state of QI and its contribution to sustainable development helps developing economies to shape the right set-up of their QI systems to best support their development endeavors.
Two tools to measure the state of QI have been developed in the past: one by the German Consultancy Company Mesopartner, co-financed and supported by Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and one by United Nations Organization for Industrial Development (UNIDO) in collaboration with the International Network on Quality Infrastructure (INetQI).
UNIDO, PTB and Mesopartner agreed to explore ways to integrate the Quality Infrastructure for Sustainable Development (QI4SD) Index and the Global Quality Infrastructure Index (GQII) into a single, integrated global index. A dedicated workshop at the UNIDO headquarters in Vienna convened 23 international QI and statistical experts from 19 different countries to inform about methodology and data basis of the GQII in detail and exchange views and ideas on the principles that will guide the development of an integrated index. This workshop follows an Expert Group Meeting (EGM) on the QI4SD Index, which was held in November 2023, gathering feedback on the QI4SD Index methodology and data collection process, and collaboration to develop a single index was initially broached.
Both indices have been developed over the years in parallel, with the GQII’s main objective being to measure the state of development of QI in different countries, and with the QI4SD Index’s goal being to measure the overall state of a country’s QI readiness to support the SDGs. There is value addition in collaboration, as it would build on the strengths of each index, provide enrichment, offer a longer-term perspective and sustainability. A single, well-designed index will provide a consistent and unified assessment of quality infrastructure worldwide, avoiding conflicting rankings that could lead to confusion or misperceptions.
The discussions during the workshop laid the groundwork for key principles and elements that would guide the development of a single index. UNIDO, PTB and Mesopartner agreed on the following during the workshop:
The single index will:
- Maintain the definition of QI developed by INetQI. Furthermore, INetQI would continue to be a key partner in the development of the index through the provision of data and validation of the indicators and methodology.
- Combine the aims of both the GQII (assessing QI performance) and the QI4SD Index (the contribution of QI to sustainable development and the specific SDGs).
- Lobby for publicly available data from QI-institutions and will make its own data publicly available.
- Generate, based on the underlying data analysis, several informative products including country reports, regional, sectoral and progress on the SDGs reports.
Several key elements and principles for integration are still discussed and to clearly elaborate a roadmap towards a single index.
For more information, please contact:
Mr. Alejandro Rivera-Rojas: a.rivera-rojas@unido.org
Mr. Stefan Wallerath: stefan.wallerath@ptb.de
Dr. Ulrich Harmes-Liedtke: uhl@mesopartner.com
Image © UNIDO
