Why is the U.S. a target?

The scale of U.S. aid spending, the sheer number of U.S. government agencies charged with that spending and the complexity of the appropriations process all make the U.S. a natural priority for Publish What You Fund's global aid transparency campaign efforts.

What do we want?

Building upon the remarkable history of access to information efforts within the U.S., as well as the new administration's innovative approach to transparency in domestic spending (notably, recovery.gov and data.gov), Publish What You Fund advocates U.S. support for the International Aid Transparency Initiative to achieve comparable standards for assessing US aid spending in recipient countries against the examples of other donor nations.

Publish What You Fund will also advocate for foreign aid through different Congress legislation including but not limited to H.R. 2139 and S. 1524. Our advocacy efforts will also concentrate on the potential re-write of the Foreign Assistance Act, the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review and the Presidential Study Directive on Global Development.

How are we doing this?

To this end, Publish What You Fund will assess the specific challenges and opportunities a U.S. advocacy campaign will involve; reach out to key administration and congressional staff to build support for the aid transparency agenda; and will actively participate in the Modernising Foreign Assistance Network - the main outreach network for aid charities and think tanks in the U.S. (Click here for MFAN's response to questions posed by the Presidential Study Directive team).

Publish What You Fund also recognizes the importance of building strong partnership with NGO’s and will seek out their support as well as collaboration in different projects. Oxfam, Development Gateway and Interaction will be critical in developing our outreach and advocacy campaigns.

Read our U.S. Ask Paper

We have also undertaken a systematic comparison of the language on aid transparency in the U.S aid reform bills; the Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act of 2009 (s. 1524), and the Initiating Foreign Assistance Reform Act of 2009 (HR 2139).