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Sincerity rubric unveiled at British Computer Society Conference 2019

October 24, 2019 -  This is the script from the presentation made at the British Computer Society Conference 2019, hosted by Middlesex University Dubai.
 
BCS 2019 was held under the theme of Sustainability & Women Empowerment and I was invited to present my masters' thesis: a rubric for analysing the sincerity of states in "supporting, implementing and reporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals".
 
By fortunate coincidence, this was also October 24, UN Day.
This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be standing here. 
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I should be back in my office on the other side of campus preparing for my classes next week. 
 
Over the first 15 years of this millennium we were supposed to have learned from the Millennium Development Goals.
 
By now we were supposed to have developed and started implementing change that would fix climate change, eradicate extreme poverty and fight inequality. 
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There have been hundreds of events and public engagements since Rio+20, and millions voted in the online MyWorld Survey. What’s more, Over 150 nations have come forward with their Voluntary National Reviews and sustainability reports in the first cycle of the Sustainable Development Goals to show what they have been doing.
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So why is it that for the past three years the UN Secretary General has repeatedly complained that the politics and solutions needed to achieve the Goals are still nowhere in sight?
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By 2030 - just more than 10 years away, we are to have achieved 169 targets, however, we continue to hear that "a much deeper, faster and more ambitious response is needed to unleash the social and economic transformation needed to achieve our 2030 goals".
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The government voluntary reports say they ‘hear’ us and that they understand the urgency.
 
But people all over the world are sad and angry. They just don’t believe this to be true. 
 
How can we know if these governments are sincere? Or if they are pretending and simply pursing business-as-usual politics with some optics-friendly technical solutions to keep us passive. Especially as these documents, these VNRs, are so large and difficult to read it is impossible to understand them, let alone make a case using tried-and-tested statistical methods.
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And let us not be under any illusion - these tried-and-tested statistical methods are failing us. 
 
But the people are starting to understand this.
The eyes of all future researchers are seeking new methods to overcome the weaknesses in available data.
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They are looking for and accepting qualitative studies, including those based on perceptions. 
Right here, right now after the first cycle of the High Level Political Forums have been completed is where we draw the line. And change is coming.
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My tool for a plausibility probe tool is aimed to help those actors who wish to quickly and efficiently identify holes in "political will" and to help dig further. 
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It is built on decades of industry best practice in the world of CSR (corporate social responsibility). From organisations such as the International Standards Organisation, the Global Reporting Initiative and even from management consulting firms. It also includes the UN’s own recommendations, and those from civil society groups.
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It is also designed on experts in case study development - Yin, George & Bennett, Thomas, and is built upon on Allison’s recognised theoretical model developed from the Cuban Missile Crisis. 
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In short it is made up of a few, simple tests:
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  1. Statements made vs actions taken
  2. Role of leadership
  3. Engagement with stakeholders
  4. Efforts made at awareness building
  5. Explanations offered (if any) for failure to achieve progress
  6. Evidence of adoption of international best practice in sustainable development strategy and reporting
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Here is a small section of the evidence from the rubric of my initial case study - the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland which is an ideographic, critical, and crucial case.
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Leadership
There is explicit disinterest from the leadership of the UK government in the SDGs since their announcement in 2012, and this has been demonstrated multiple times throughout the past four years with failure to appoint operational leadership, and for the highest levels of government being absent at key events and within key documents. 
 
The UK's VNR was presented following years of pressure from government backbench committees, and there has been no attempt to raise awareness of the SDGs amongst British publics.
“...if you had a Prime Minister who made this central to their domestic agenda. That is what would really transform this. If they did make it central to their domestic agenda, they could do it in a whole series of ways. They could make it absolutely central to the Cabinet Office."
 
Rt. Hon Rory Stewart, Secretary of State for International Development to International Development Committee, 2019, p7:3
Engagement
Engagement with stakeholders was disappointing and inadequate. External oversight was clearly avoided with multiple strategies undertaken including the recruitment of patsies, and organising check-box engagement activities
"People thought this was completely crazy and totally inappropriate, and all we were doing was providing for more Opposition and Backbench Business Committee debates on our head."
 
Rt. Hon Rory Stewart, Secretary of State for International Development to International Development Committee, 2019, p10:7
Explanations offered for failure to achieve progress
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Throughout the first four years the UK government claimed its existing processes and systems were sufficient to implement the SDGs, however the SDGs were not adopted within Single Department Plans until years after the launch of the Goals and following pressure from internal committees. To date the leadership of the SDGs remains within a Department with no domestic authority.
For the first time I understand now doing it domestically the challenges that people internationally have, my partners internationally, when they talk about the issues of pushing ahead with health reform or education reform in Nigeria or Myanmar.
 
\Rory Stewart Secretary of State for International Development, at the UK's Voluntary National Review to the UN HLPF, 2019
Best practice
The UK’s SDG report pays lip service to the UN’s VNR guidelines and does not include any reference to global standards in sustainability reporting. It is eighteen different reports - with the Office of National Statistics’ documentation providing a completely stand-alone, unrelated, and unexplained account of the UK’s progress.
 
In conclusion
When all is considered and reflected upon, the conclusion offered is that the UK' presents “a ‘messy’ collage of personal interests, feuds, ambitions, etc..” as described by Allison (1971 in de Langhe 2009, p1-2; Yin 2018 p 39) and is acting as a state pursuing a Governmental Politics model of international relations. 
"Those same elements of lack of coherence and the same imputations of hypocrisy could be leveled at almost any member state of the United Nations and all of us need to work together to think about how the platitudes and statements we make about the Global Goals, actually relate in practice to our actions on the ground."
 
Rory Stewart Secretary of State for International Development, at the UK's Voluntary National Review to the UN HLPF, 2019
Accordingly, it is submitted that the UK is either failing to participate in the SDG process, or is misrepresenting its activities.

Tags

#TeachSDGs #SustainableDevelopment #Sustainability #VoluntaryNationalReviews #VNRs #UnitedNations #UN #SustainableDevelopmentGoals #GlobalGoals #SDGs #Thesis #Sincerity #Trust #InternationalRelations

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