How is open aid data being used?
More organisations are now publishing more aid and development data, with richer detail than ever before. And more tools are being produced to enable a broader group of people with different interests to access the data. All this effort is not in vain. Elma Jenkins has been digging into the detail of exactly how open aid data is now being used and highlights some of the creative ways it is supporting research, policy and development practice.
Transparency means sharing data and since 2008 the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) has been advocating for the publication of standardised financial and non-financial data by a wide variety of aid organisations. In the early years of the aid transparency movement examples of use of this data were few and far between, leading some to question the purpose of aid transparency. As more agencies joined the movement to publish their data, the public has had access to an increasingly valuable resource. Thanks to these efforts, there are now over 230 organisations publishing regular, detailed, standardised, and publicly-accessible data about their work including information on their projects and programmes, budgets and documentation. These agencies have collectively published information on 719,000 activities.
Alongside the increase in available data there has been a proliferation of new tools in recent years which is driving up use. These tools improve accessibility and make it easier to collect and analyse data. We are now seeing many examples of aid data use and Publish What You Fund has been tracking these. This blog analyses how and why the data is being used.
A researcher is only as good as their tools
Over the past few years several new tools have been developed which prepare IATI data for analysis and facilitate searching in user-friendly ways. Tools include the Country Development Finance Data website built by specialists to facilitate country or publisher centred analysis, the ‘beyond USG’ tool, part of the US Foreign Assistance portal, and Data4Development’s AIDA platform which helps publishers check their published data.
These tools allow users to easily access and explore data without needing a technical or specialised understanding. You can read more about the variety of tools available to access IATI data in our blog series here. They support users to search and extract a tailored data set with functions including detailed filtering, key-word searches and interactive dashboards. For more advanced users, tools such as Datadump , IATI data tables and the IATI datastore make raw data readily accessible at scale for users to process themselves.
How is open aid data being used?
Users of open aid and development data include governments, NGOs, international research institutions, journalists and think tanks. Recent research using IATI data has focussed on a range of issues including climate spending, land rights, food security and COVID19, but how is the data actually being used?
| Tracking funding trends of specific aid flows
Improved access to budget and finance data has made possible detailed tracking of diverse thematic and agency funding flows across and within agencies. Harm Reduction International used IATI data to track aid funding for narcotics control to show how aid was being used for this little-known sector. Academics from a consortium led by Cambridge University tracked private entity receivers using contract data to better understand the role of the private sector in UK aid. Tracking funding can also be used to understand what an agency is doing. The media platform Devex used IATI data to show how EC INTPA spent its money in 2022. |
| Geographic dashboards to visualise funding flows
The increased availability of sub-national locations of aid projects coupled with better tools to build maps has made it possible to create visual representations of aid data with geographic mapping dashboards. Examples include LandPortal’s Land projects database, used to improve understanding of land governance information, and The Lowy Institute’s Pacific Island project mapping, which was designed to improve donor and recipient government understanding of aid flows to the region. These maps are highly interactive and allow users to search and learn from the data. |
| Comparative analysis using multiple data sources
This type of analysis compares aid data with other sources such as national budget data, economic data or other primary data. For example, several partner country governments used IATI data to compare aid flows with their national budgets to identify overlaps. The Center for Global Development used GNI data of recipient countries to compare the levels of poverty focussed aid across major aid agencies. NGO The Institute for Journalism and Social Change has compared aid spending with military spending in the conflict affected areas of The West Bank and Gaza. This showed how financial flows connect taxpayers around the world to facilities that have been damaged or destroyed in the current war. |
| Identifying gaps between resources and need in aid and development funding
A similar but distinctive use of open aid data is the identification of gaps in aid funding flows. This is done most effectively when development needs are clearly identified. The increase of detailed descriptions in aid data is important here to better identify where funding is going. For example, The Clean Air Fund identified clean air funding gaps by assessing pollution levels against funding levels. And The Rainforest Foundation used IATI data to track where funding is falling short of need among indigenous groups working to mitigate climate change. This research highlights the impacts funding gaps can have. |
| Analysing the impacts of development policies using evidence
Another area of research is to assess the impact of development policies by using data as evidence. Save The Children studied the impact of UK cuts to nutrition funding by studying budgets before and after the policy change. Similarly, Oxfam and Publish What You Fund both used IATI data to create an independent baseline to test a recent USAID policy on aid ‘localisation’ thereby adding to the debate on how this policy can be measured and improved. A group of academics published a paper that used open contracting data as evidence to show how World Bank reforms of anti-corruption policies could support fairer government procurement. |
These examples showcase the variety of ways in which data is being used in research, policy and development practice. Improvements to the quality and quantity of data now available have helped to facilitate this. The result is that data is being used in more creative ways to interrogate, analyse and advocate for changes to the way aid is implemented.
Discover more about open aid data and its use at these upcoming events:
- The IATI community will convene for its annual Members’ Assembly and Community Exchange from 23-26 April in Bogotá, Colombia. It provides an opportunity to discuss and showcase the development and use of aid and humanitarian data.
- Publish What You Fund will continue to track and monitor the transparency of the world’s major aid and development agencies with the Aid Transparency Index, the next iteration of which will be launched on 16 July 2024 in Washington DC.