WHAT IS THE AID TRANSPARENCY INDEX AND HOW DOES IT WORK?
The Aid Transparency Index is the only independent measure of transparency among the world’s leading development organisations. It is a periodic publication researched and produced by Publish What You Fund. The Index tracks and encourages progress towards aid transparency, while holding donors to account.
For the 2022 Index, 50 donors were assessed. Details on the criteria for inclusion in the Index can be found in the
2022 Aid Transparency Index technical paper.
The Index is an interactive process and Publish What You Fund strongly engages with the donor organisations it is assessing. At the beginning of data collection, Publish What You Fund shares a preliminary assessment of each organisation’s level of transparency and remains available throughout and after the data collection period to respond to questions and queries. Additionally, for the first time in 2018, Publish What You Fund provided donors with the Data Quality Tester, a new open source tool that allows organisations to independently test the quality of their data against the Index methodology.
To ensure both the accuracy and impartiality of the Index, independent reviewers also provide feedback, comments and suggestions on assessments. They typically come from CSOs, think tanks or universities familiar with the donor organisation concerned or the development sector more broadly. Further input is provided by a group of peer reviewers, comprised of recognised experts in the development sector and/or on open data. They advise Publish What You Fund on the methodology and related assessments.