The Global Project on Measuring and Fostering the Progress of Societies is a partnership-based initiative hosted by the OECD that was officially launched in July 2008. It emerged from the successful OECD World Forums on Statistics, Knowledge and Policy held in Palermo (2004) and Istanbul (2007). It was designed to further explore the perspectives opened by the many substantive contributions and political messages delivered in these major events, and as a concrete follow-up to the Istanbul Declaration, jointly formulated by the EC, the OECD, the UN Secretariat, the UNDP, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the World Bank – and subsequently endorsed by numerous international and national organisations.

The aim of the Global Project is to materialize the “commitment to measuring and fostering the progress of societies” by the signatories of the Istanbul Declaration. Following up to the Declaration, the Global Project addresses “the need to undertake the measurement of societal progress in every country, going beyond conventional economic measures such as GDP per capita”; to enhance “a culture of evidence-based decision making to increase the welfare of society”; to “strengthen citizen’s capacity to influence the goals of the societies they live in through debate and consensus building”; and to “increase the accountability of public policies”. To reach these goals, and following the lines of action of the Istanbul Declaration, the Global Project aims to:

• Encourage communities to consider for themselves what ‘progress’ means in the 21st Century;
• Identify and share best practices on the measurement of societal progress and increase the awareness to do so using sound and reliable methodologies;
• Stimulate national and international debates, based on solid statistical data and indicators, on both national and global issues of societal progress, their measurement and policy incidences;
• Produce a broader, shared, public understanding of changing conditions, while highlighting areas of significant change or inadequate knowledge;
• Advocate appropriate investment in building statistical capacity, especially in developing countries, to improve the availability of data and indicators needed to guide development programs and report on societal progress as well as on progress towards internationally agreed goals.
The Global Project network includes three categories of international and national organisations which are involved at different levels in this collaborative initiative: Partners, Associates and Correspondents.
• Partners are the major international/supranational organisations playing a key role in the overall Project, investing substantial resources – financial or in-kind – over several years and assuming responsibility for the management of the Project or for specific tasks. The terms of co-operation with Partners are laid down in a MoU or exchanges of letters with the OECD.
• Associates are public and private national and international organisations that are interested in contributing to specific activities of the GP (advocacy, research, training, etc.). The arrangements with Associates are established through an exchange of letters with the OECD.
• Correspondents are organisations wishing to support work on measuring the progress of society in their country/region. They are a formal part of the GP’s network.
The Global Project is governed by a Board, formed by the Partners of the project, which approves the working arrangements, the governance procedures, the program of work and the nominations of Associates and Correspondents of the project.

Substantive work
Since the inception of the Global Project in July 2008, the Project team has spent a good deal of time in setting up the structures and tools of the Project, building links with new and potential Associates and Correspondents to the Project, and producing several advocacy materials. In this period, the team succeed to launch, co-ordinate or supervise research and substantive work on defining and measuring progress. The following is of note:
• A Taxonomy of Progress has been drafted and submitted to two successive processes of peer review. A Handbook on Measuring Progress in Practice is being prepared. A report on What makes a successful set of indicators was completed. An Online Knowledge Base on Measuring Progress was established. A Handbook on measuring wellbeing with the involvement of Citizens is underway (led by the Council of Europe); and a second Survey on What people know about progress is under preparation.
• Conferences were organised in Moscow, Rennes, Strasbourg, Kyoto, Cairo and Washington.
• Training courses were conducted in Italy, Slovakia, Jordan, Japan, and Canada.
• The official Project website, launched in May 2008, has been expanding and the number of visitors is increasing progressively.
• A password-protected site was set up where Partners, Associates, Correspondents and the members of the Co-ordination group can provide comments and interact.
• A WikiProgress site is under development, as well as a site that will host the library of innovative ICT tools;
• The team invested significant efforts on the preparation of the 3^rd OECD World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Policy held in Busan, Korea, on 27-30 October 2009.
Moreover, the Global Project has identified three key ways of adding value to national, regional and global initiatives to improve measures of progress, well-being, quality of life and sustainable development:
• Act as a forum to bring people together, to share ideas and information on how to organise the processes so as to reach a shared view of whether a country/region/community is progressing or not;
• Develop best practices on how to measure progress and how to disseminate/communicate statistical measures and key messages;
• Advocate for the measurement of progress in practice, by demonstrating how it can benefit societies around the world and support those who want to measure progress. 

The GP has been able to mobilise and catalyse a large number of people, organisations as well as research, policy and civil society networks. The 3rd OECD World Forum, attended by more than 1900 people, strengthen this capacity of the Global Project to act as a powerful network of networks. The Forum attracted several important networks of researchers and institutions. For example, the UNDP bring to the Forum its network of experts collaborating to the preparation of National Human Development Reports. The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) did the same, as the International Association of Supreme Audit Institutions and the International Association of Economic and Social Councils.

On the basis of the current development and achievements of the GP, it is likely that its work and impact will grow over the next years, especially if the Project proves able to:
• develop a strong and convincing narrative for political leaders;
• engage different stakeholders and gain their support;
• prove its capacity of bringing together existing work underway around the world;
• deliver concrete, high-quality and visible results;
• raise adequate funds to scale-up the whole initiative.

The Global Project is benefiting from the formidable impetus given by the work of the “Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress” launched in 2008 by French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, chaired by Prof. Stiglitz, gathering several leading scientists (including five Nobel awarded) and in which the OECD senior staff has been involved as member (the Chief Statistician) and rapporteurs. The official release of the Stiglitz Commission’s report, on 14 September 2009 - as well as the presentation by Prof. Stiglitz of the findings and recommendations of the Commission at the 3rd World Forum - confirmed the relevance of the objectives and work streams of the Global Project.

Adolfo Morrone and Raul Suarez de Miguel are Senior Researcher and Senior Advisor, OECD Global Project on “Measuring the Progress of Societies”.