What aid and development data is available and where can it be found? In this post Elma Jenkins, Publish What You Fund, and Rolf Kleef, data/IT consultant, introduce three user-friendly tools that can be used to access International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) data – D-portal, the Datastore and Country Development Finance Data – and describe their key features. This is the first in a blog series examining IATI data access tools.
Almost as soon as USAID announced its target that 25% of its funding would go to local partners, the debate began over the definition of what counts as “local” and how to measure it. According to Publish What You Fund’s groundbreaking new research, the choice of methodology could determine whether more than $1.4 billion of additional funding is channeled to local actors each year.
Pascal Barollier shares Gavi’s aid transparency journey, how the use of aid data has evolved, and how they incorporated data for the fast-moving COVAX initiative into their systems.
Hamzat Lawal discusses how Connected Development works with marginalised communities to track funding and monitor development projects. He reflects on whether international donors, and those inputting the aid data, know that teams of community volunteers are consuming and using the same data to ensure their projects are being implemented effectively.
Richard Watts of Save the Children discusses how open data is being used to track aid to nutrition and hold donors accountable for their commitments. He explains that this is only possible due to continued improvements in the available aid data, but development partners could still do more to increase their transparency.
The way we think and talk about aid transparency is evolving. Our new three-year strategy sets out how we want to work and what we want to achieve by 2024. We are moving towards a definition of transparency which includes not just publication but engagement and accountability. In this blog, our Chair, Paul Lenz, and CEO, Gary Forster, provide more insights into our thinking, focus areas and goals.
