Google executive Michael Jones admits information can’t solve everything in the world but he’s hoping a new Web site launched by the United Nations will at least show the world what needs fixing, and where.

MDGMonitor collates data from governments, U.N. agencies and NGOs on progress towards meeting the U.N. Millennium Development Goals — a lofty set of ambitions including halving extreme poverty by 2015 and boosting development aid by rich countries to the poor.

“In the world of business sometimes you set big goals for yourself,” said Michael Jones, chief technologist for Google Earth, which is integrated on the site.

When you get half way through and see you’re not achieving the target — as the world is with the millennium development goals — “you work harder,” he said. “That’s why you measure.”

“At Google we believe information that can be shared may not be the cure of everything, but hiding it certainly is the failure of everything.”

He and others at a news conference at U.N. headquarters in New York fielded questions on how the site would help poverty-stricken Africans in Burkina Faso, for example, who don’t even have access to the Internet.

Jones said it was not so important for everybody in the world to see it as for governments, development organizations and others able to do something about it to have access. “In the countries that fall behind, what they need most of all is to know they’re falling behind.”

Pictured above, from left to right: Michael Jones, chief technologist of Google Earth, Kemal Dervis, UNDP administrator, Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary general, Carlos Dominguez, senior vice president of Cisco.