Fostering trust: why aid transparency matters

“This money is being raised in our name; for our country. We should know how it is being spent.”

We have encountered many citizens and activists who are seeking answers on aid spending. In our latest blog, we recall just a few of their experiences and explore how concerns about the misuse of aid funds by national governments, whether grounded in truth or not, can erode trust. We consider the role of transparency in building trust in complex environments, and the challenge of implementation.

Is it time for the aid transparency community to re-think its approach?

In this guest blog, Michael Roberts of Giveth.io reflects on the development of open data standards, the differing technology and approaches that have been adopted and what we can learn from this. He argues that initiatives like the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) must continue to focus on addressing internal organisational challenges on governance and capacity. He also contends that we should be open to new forms of technology integrations and not be locked into any one approach.

Other reading

And here’s what else we’ve been reading this week…

Equal Measures 2030 and partners have launched the 2019 SDG Gender Index, hosted on the Gender Advocates Data Hub. The index is a comprehensive tool to explore the state of gender equality across 129 countries, 14 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and 51 issues aligned to the SDGs. The index shows that the world is far from achieving gender equality, with 1.4 billion girls and women living in countries that get a “very poor” grade on gender equality. The global average score of the 129 countries is 65.7 out of 100 (“poor” in the index scoring system).

At the recent Open Government Partnership summit in Canada, OGP launched its first Open Government Global Report, a comprehensive assessment of the state of open government. The report examines a vast amount of the world’s governance data, across multiple dimensions of democracy and openness.

Congratulations to IATI, which has reached a milestone of 1,000 organisations publishing their spending using the IATI Standard. The UK government became the first to publish their aid in 2011, and now 1,000 governments, multilateral and non-governmental organisations, foundations, private sector and development finance institutions have published their data on development and humanitarian resources.

G20 finance ministers and central bank governors are set to adopt the Principles for Debt Transparency in early June. In a Center for Global Development blog, Mark Plant reviews the new voluntary Principles, which he calls “a promising, but untested commitment” by leading financial institutions to responsible lending to developing countries.

George Ingram of the Brookings Institution (and Chair of Friends of Publish What You Fund) has published a blog on the future of aid: how the global development business is evolving. He reviews recent projects assessing the state and future of development.

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