Human Development Reports have been annually published by the Human Development Report Office at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) since 1990; see hdr.undp.org/en. The discussion about the relevant dimensions of the Human Development Index (HDI), the appropriate way to measure human development and suitable data has not stopped since the design of the HDI.

In a Background Paper published on the UNDP website, the question is discussed which data are used and which problems and limitations, including quality issues, are involved in this use; see http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/new-generation-data-human-development. The question of interest is: Are data from new sources, alternative data or big data, suited to supplement or substitute for data used for monitoring human development but are (for some countries) not available or problematic?