OpenAid, a fundamental pillar of Sweden’s recent aid reforms, has been launched today. The site puts aid transparency into action, demonstrating what is possible when governments publish their aid information.

The OpenAid site illustrates how raw data on aid activities can be turned into accessible and usable visualisation, allowing the public to see how their tax money is being spent. The data on the site currently includes aid flows from 1973 to the present, and can be broken down both by year and by recipient country.  As the data is open-source, others can combine it with other datasets or create their own visualisations from it.

Moreover, when Sweden and other governments follow the UK and Hewlett Foundation in publishing their data to the International Aid Transparency Initiative standard, visualisations like this will be able to be constructed to include the majority of global aid activities. Not only will this deliver government accountability to citizens in donor and recipient countries, but it will also allow for governments to make more informed choices about where to spend their aid money.

See the first visualisations on OpenAid here.