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Glossary

ABC

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MNO

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AA

German Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt)

ABC

Brazilian Cooperation Agency (Agencia Brasileira de Cooperacao)

Accessible

The information is publicly available and easily obtainable in machine-readable formats via a central location or registry. It is provided free of charge under an open licence.

AECID

Spanish Agency for International Development
(Agencia Espanola de Cooperacion Internacional para el Desarrollo)

AFD

French Agency for Development (Agence Francaise de Developpement)

AfDB

African Development Bank

AsDB

Asian Development Bank

ATI

Aid Transparency Index

AusAID

Australian Agency for International Development

Bilateral institution

Bilateral institutions, such as USAID, operate on a government to government basis to implement their aid programmes.

BMF

German Ministry of Finance (Bundesministerium der Finanzen)

BMZ

German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development
(Bundesministerium fur wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung)

BPA

Busan Partnership Agreement

CIDA

Canadian International Development Agency

Comparable

Information is disaggregated and detailed to allow different users to access, use and compare it with other international data sets in many ways. At present, the only standard that allows this for aid flows is IATI.

Comprehensive

Information is detailed and complete, both in terms of breadth (all the different types of foreign assistance – development, humanitarian, post conflict, security, etc.) and depth (detailed enough for others to be able plan on the basis of that information).

CRS

Creditor Reporting System (of the OECD DAC)

CSO

Civil society organisation

CSV

Comma separated values

Current

For the purposes of the 2013 Index, “current” is defined as published within the 12 months immediately prior to the data collection period (1 May–31 July 2013), so information published on 1 May 2012 or later and that relates to that date or later is accepted as current.

DAC

Development Assistance Committee (of the OECD)

Data quality

How useful the data is for different users. To be considered high quality, the data needs to be comprehensive, timely, accessible and comparable.

DFI

Development Finance Institution

DFID

Department for International Development (UK government)

DG DEVCO

Directorate General Development and Cooperation – EuropeAid (European Commission)

DOD

Department of Defense (U.S. government)

EBRD

European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

EC

European Commission

ECHO

Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Department (European Commission)

EDRIS

European Disaster Response Information System

EEAS

European External Action Service (European Commission)

EIB

European Investment Bank

EU

European Union

FCO

Foreign and Commonwealth Office (UK government)

FOI(A)

Freedom of Information (Act)

FPI

Foreign Policy Instruments Service (European Commission)

FSS

Forward Spending Survey (of the DAC)

FTS

Financial Tracking Service (of UN OCHA)

FY

Financial Year

G8

Group of Eight

GAVI

Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization

GIZ

German Agency for International Cooperation (Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit)

GPEDC

Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation

GTZ

German Agency for Technical Cooperation (Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit)

HLF-4

Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness

HLP

High Level Panel (United Nations)

HTML

HyperText Markup Language

IADB

Inter-American Development Bank

IATI

The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) aims to make information about aid spending easier to find, use and compare. It is a voluntary, multi-stakeholder initiative that seeks to improve the transparency of aid in order to increase its effectiveness in tackling poverty.

IATI standard

The IATI standard is a technical publishing framework. It uses an XML format, a machine-readable “mark-up” language that allows programmes to extract data and present it in a comparable and accessible way.

IDA

International Development Association (World Bank)

IFAD

International Fund for Agricultural Development (United Nations)

IFC

International Finance Corporation (World Bank)

IFI

International Financial Institution

ILO

International Labour Organization

IMF

International Monetary Fund

Interoperability

Interoperability is the extent to which systems or standards can exchange data, and interpret and present that shared data to produce useful results, as defined by the end users of the different systems or standards. The design goals of XML emphasize simplicity, generality and usability over the Internet.

JICA

Japan International Cooperation Agency

KOICA

Korea International Cooperation Agency

Machine-readable

Information that is presented in a structured way (not free text) that can be read automatically by a computer. Formats such as XML or spreadsheets (Excel, CSV) are machine-readable formats. Traditional word processed documents, HTML and PDF files are easily read by humans but are difficult for machines to interpret.

MAE

Ministry of Foreign Affairs (le Ministère des Affaires étrangères) – French government

MCC

Millennium Challenge Corporation

MFA

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

MIGA

Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (World Bank)

MINEFI

Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry (le Ministère de l’Économie et des Finances) – French government

MOD

Ministry of Defence (UK government)

MOFCOM

Ministry of Commerce (China government)

MoU

Memorandum of Understanding

Multilateral

Multilateral institutions, such as the World Bank and UNICEF, pool aid from one or more sources for disbursal to different recipients.

NGO

Non-governmental organisation

NZAID

New Zealand Aid Programme

OAP

Open Aid Partnership

OCHA

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (United Nations)

OECD

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Official Development Assistance (ODA)

Official Development Assistance (ODA) refers to flows to countries and to multilateral institutions which are provided by official agencies to promote the economic development and welfare of developing countries as its main objective. They are concessional in character and convey a grant element of at least 25 per cent (see full definition on OECD DAC website).

Official Development Finance (ODF)

Official Development Finance (ODF) refers to flows to recipient countries, including bilateral ODA, grants, concessional and non-concessional loans by multilateral financial institutions, and Other Official Flows (OOF) for development purposes (see full definition on OECD DAC website).

OGP

Open Government Partnership

OMB

Office of Management and Budget (Executive Office of the U.S. President)

Open license

The legal licence under which information is made available is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute the information — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and/or share-alike.

Open source

Open source refers to a programme in which the source code is available to the general public for use and/or modification from its original design free of charge.

OTA

Office of Technical Assistance (U.S. Treasury)

Other Official Flows

Other Official Flows (OOF) are transactions by the official sector with countries which do not meet the conditions for eligibility as ODA, either because they are not primarily aimed at development, or because they have a grant element of less than 25 per cent (see full definition on OECD DAC website).

PDF

Portable Document Format

PEPFAR

President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief

RTI

Right to Information

SDC

Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation

Sida

Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency

Timely

Information is current and provided frequently (at least quarterly and preferably monthly), so it can be mapped by different actors against any budget cycle.

TR-AID

Transparent Aid (aid database of the European Commission)

Traceability

Capturing the full ‘supply chain’ of aid, tracking the granting, re-granting and subcontracting of aid through to its final delivery to the intended beneficiary.

U.S.

United States of America

UK

United Kingdom

UN

United Nations

UNAIDS

United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS

UNDP

United Nations Development Programme

UNESCO

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

UNFPA

United Nations Population Fund

UNICEF

United Nations Children’s Fund

UNOPS

United Nations Office for Project Services

URL

Uniform Resource Locator

USAID

United States Agency for International Development

USD

United States Dollar

WHO

World Health Organization (United Nations)

XML

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a computer language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is readable by both humans and machines.

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