Sally Paxton and George Ingram reflect on the performance of the five US donors in the 2020 Aid Transparency Index, and the next steps needed to improve their transparency and accountability. They also lay down the challenge of how we move towards the more important goals of doing development differently.
We are launching a new 2.5 year initiative to increase support for the transparency of Development Finance Institutions (DFIs). It follows a 12-month scoping exercise, and we’re now embarking on a focused, strategic programme to move things forward. Based on our initial research, and the previous work of academics, practitioners and policy-makers, we have set out a collaborative, evidence-based approach that we believe can inform and improve DFI transparency, accountability and decision-making.
Scheduled to open its doors this fall, the new US Development Finance Corporation has some ambitious and welcome goals. George Ingram and Sally Paxton consider the key issues for the new institution to address if it is to set the gold standard for a modern and transparent DFI.
The Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act (FATAA) was passed by Congress in 2016 to require the US agencies involved in implementing foreign assistance to publish detailed country-based information on their activities. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently assessed how well the 22 agencies are complying with the data requirements. Our US representative Sally Paxton and the Brookings Institution’s George Ingram have been analysing the OMB report and conclude that it falls short in a number of ways. In this blog they summarise the gaps and missed opportunities.
We have built several free tools to give IATI publishers easy ways to check and visualise their own data. They provide a great way to assess your data ahead of the forthcoming Aid Transparency Index. This blog provides a summary of what you can do with the Data Quality Tester, IATI Decipher and IATI Canary.
President Trump will soon send Congress his budget for FY 2020. The development community is fully expecting drastic cuts to the proposed foreign aid budget – repeating the FY ‘18 and ’19 scenarios. Over the past 18 months we have conducted detailed research into the impact of proposed cuts. In this blog we reflect on our findings and their significance for the FY 20 budget debate.
