The course was organized within the framework of the UN Joint Programme “Sustaining livelihoods affected by the Aral Sea disaster” implemented jointly by five UN agencies in Uzbekistan, including UNDP, UNESCO, UNFPA, WHO and UNV in cooperation with the Government of Uzbekistan and the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Karakalpakstan.

The Joint Programme is financed by the UN Human Security Trust Fund. In year 2000 the Millennium Summit brought together the leaders of 189 countries to unite their efforts to eradicate poverty, improve access to basic services, reduce the spread of diseases and protect the environment. In fact they came up with 8 development goals called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be reached by 2015.

Considering the relevance of the global MDGs in the context of Uzbekistan, the Government signed the Millennium Declaration and developed its own national MDG indicators and targets. Such indicators were integrated into key national documents including the Welfare Improvement Strategy. As a result, over the course of 10 years significant achievements were made in terms of increase of employment, creation of social infrastructure, reduction of maternal mortality rates, provision of access to education, which were presented by President Islam Karimov at the UN Global Summit on MDGs in 2010.

However, in order to accelerate the progress in achievement of MDGs as per the Global Action Plan proposed by the UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon, it is necessary to strengthen MDG monitoring and evaluation capacity on local level, especially in the Republic of Karakalpakstan. Therefore, within the framework of the UN Joint Programme the representatives of the public sector of Karakalpakstan, particularly specialists from the Ministry of Economy completed a course on DevInfo database management for monitoring of the achievement of national MDGs, human development indicators and general socio-economic conditions in Karakalpakstan.

The main goal of the course was to strengthen the capacity of the government officials related to MDG data analysis and regional planning. DevInfo is a free software introduced by the United Nations Development Group (UNDG) in 2004 to assist countries in monitoring of achievement of the MDGs and human development.

It is a tool for organizing, storing and presenting data in a uniform way to facilitate data sharing at the country level across government departments, UN agencies and development partners. DevInfo has features that produce tables, graphs and maps for inclusion in reports, presentations and advocacy materials. Over the course of a three-day training course the government officials learned the data search and analysis methods, creation of tables, graphs and mapping, as well as the ways to create and manage database.

It is crucial to note that in order to ensure the sustainability of this initiative the UN Joint Programme will procure a set of computers for the Ministry of Economy and Devinfo software will be installed on all computers. The Joint Programme will provide assistance in development of welfare indicators for Karakalpakstan over the course of the next two years.