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Glossary

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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.

AFD

French Agency for Development (Agence Francaise de Developpement)

AfDB

African Development Bank

AsDB

Asian Development Bank

Australia DFAT

Australia Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Bilateral institution

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

BMZ

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

Common standard

The common standard sets out good practice in reporting and publishing aid information.  It combines three complementary systems and processes: the OECD DAC’s Creditor Reporting System (CRS) and the Forward Spending Survey (FSS) and IATI.

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

CRS

Creditor Reporting System (of the OECD DAC)

CSO

Civil society organisation

CSV

Comma separated values

Current

For the purposes of the 2016 Index, “current” is defined as published within the 12 months immediately prior to the data collection period (01 October 2014 –30 September 2015), so information published on 01 October 2014 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

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

EIB

European Investment Bank

EU

European Union

FOI

Freedom of Information

FTS

Financial Tracking Service (of UN OCHA)

G7

Group of Seven (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and U.S.)

GAVI

Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization

GIZ

German Agency for International Cooperation (Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit)

Global Fund

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

GPEDC

Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation

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 Registry

The site on which raw IATI data in XML format can be found. The site provides links to publishers’ raw data files and includes a basic preview function.

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)

IFC

International Finance Corporation (World Bank)

IFI

International Financial Institution

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.

MAEDI

Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development (le Ministère des Affaires Étrangères et du Développement International – French government)

MCC

Millennium Challenge Corporation

MDGs

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight international development goals that were established following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000, following the adoption of the United Nations Millennium Declaration. All 189 United Nations member states at the time and at least 23 international organizations committed to help achieve these goals.

 

MFA/MOFA

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

MINEFI

Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry (le Ministère de l’

MOF

Ministry of Finance

MOFCOM

Ministry of Commerce (China government)

MoU

A Memorandum of Understanding is a document which details the agreement usually between the organisation and recipient government for the provision of aid in the country.

Multilateral institution

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

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

Open license

The legal licence under which information is made available is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute the information

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.

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

Post-2015 Development Agenda

The Post-2015 Development Agenda refers to a process led by the United Nations (UN) that aims to help define the future global development framework that will succeed the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of eight global development targets which came to an end in 2015.

RTI

Right to Information

SDC

Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation

SDGs

Sustainable Development Goals

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.

Traceability

Capturing the full

U.S.

United States of America

UK

United Kingdom

UN

United Nations

UNDP

United Nations Development Programme

UNICEF

United Nations Children

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.