Share your experience and help shape our new guidance
At a time when space for civic engagement is under duress in many parts of the world and trust between governments and civil society appears to be dwindling, examples of meaningful collaborations and partnerships offer valuable lessons. Over the past year, the UN-hosted Collaborative on Citizen Data has brought together a diverse mix of CSOs, national statistical offices, national human rights institutions, academia and other stakeholders from the wider development sector. Together, they have been working on Guidance on Forming National Partnerships on Citizen Data.
The guidance brings together practical lessons from government and non-governmental stakeholders who have been working together to build more inclusive and responsive data systems in their respective countries. These lessons are merged to form a coherent step-by-step guide on how to foster cross-sector collaboration, with dedicated entry points and pathways for governments, CSOs, academia and other stakeholders seeking to establish new partnerships.
The International Civil Society Centre (a co-founder of the Collaborative) and the Partnership in Statistics for Development in the 21st Century (PARIS21) are co-leading the development of this guidance. It will be presented to the UN Statistical Commission with the aim of establishing it as an official reference for governments.
This is much more than a theoretical playbook. It offers practical examples of how governments and civil society can move beyond dialogue and become partners in planning and decision-making.
Why this matters for civil society
Many civil society organisations generate valuable evidence every day.
They document human rights violations. They collect information about communities that remain underrepresented in official data. They help make visible the realities of people who are too often left out of policy discussions.
Yet one challenge remains familiar across the board: how do CSOs ensure that governments hear, recognise and use this evidence?
Too often, channels for structured engagement with government institutions are limited. Advocacy efforts can depend on personal relationships, ad hoc consultations or one-off opportunities.
This guidance aims to address that challenge.
Rather than focusing solely on data-driven advocacy, in which civil society organisations seek to persuade governments to act on evidence, the guidance focuses on actual data partnerships. It explores how governments, civil society organisations and other stakeholders can work together from the outset to identify data gaps, generate evidence and find solutions that create value for everyone involved.
For civil society organisations, this can help to:
- identify new entry points for engagement with government institutions;
- build stronger relationships around evidence and data;
- strengthen the credibility and visibility of community-generated and CSO evidence;
- create pathways for citizen data to inform policy processes and national reporting;
- move from one-off advocacy opportunities towards longer-term collaboration.
In short, it is a guide to creating the kinds of partnerships that can make advocacy more effective and more sustainable while helping to foster new spaces for civic engagement.
Nine years of advocacy coming together
The release of this review draft also marks an important milestone for the Centre’s Leave No One Behind Partnership.
For nearly a decade, our partnership has advocated for greater recognition of citizen-generated evidence and for the inclusion of communities who are often invisible in official data systems. Across multiple countries, civil society organisations have worked with national statistical offices, governments and international partners to demonstrate that community-generated evidence can strengthen decision-making and help ensure that no one is left behind.
The new guidance also builds on these experiences.
Many of the lessons reflected in the draft come directly from country-level partnerships that have experimented with new ways of working together, tested approaches to collaboration and demonstrated that trust between institutions can be built through shared objectives and practical action.
For those who have been part of this journey, the release of the draft is therefore much more than a technical milestone. It is evidence that years of advocacy are translating into practical tools that can support and guide both civil society and government actors.
A timely reminder that collaboration is possible
The challenges civil society is facing today are real. But so are the opportunities.
At a time when public debate often focuses on growing divisions in society and declining trust in governments and public institutions, this guidance highlights something different: governments and civil society do not always have to stand on opposite sides of the table.
When different actors come together around evidence, transparency and a shared commitment to leaving no one behind, they create new opportunities to strengthen accountability and make policymaking more inclusive.
That is the vision behind this guidance.
Help shape the final version
We are now inviting civil society organisations, government representatives, researchers, national statistical offices and other stakeholders to help us shape the final guidance.
We would particularly value insights from practitioners with experience of building partnerships, generating community-led evidence or engaging governments through data and advocacy.
Review the draft
and share your feedback here:
Form link: https://share.forms.app/cjuulhansen/untitled-form-1-1
Your experience can help make the final guidance more practical, accessible and useful for people working with citizen data around the world.
This guidance on partnerships is part of a wider series we are producing. Alongside it, the Centre and its partners are working on guidance for meaningful citizen engagement in data processes, accessibility, data quality, impact storytelling and other areas of citizen data practice. We plan to publish the full series towards the end of the year before bringing it to the UN for endorsement.
After nine years of collective advocacy and learning, we hope these resources can help open new doors for effective partnerships, stronger CSO advocacy and meaningful community engagement in decision-making processes.