Where aid goes matters
Having been at the AidData conference in Oxford at the end of March, Soren Gigler writes about the need to think geographically about aid on Development Marketplace.
Aid transparency in the Report of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Debt, Aid and Trade
The Report of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Debt Aid and Trade stresses the importance of coordination between donors, recipient country ownership, and predictability and accountability of aid. Below are the recommendations made in conclusion to the report, with transparency mentions highlighted.
AidData and the IATI Standard
An interesting AidData blog entry uses standardisation of boat signals to explain the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI)’s function in the aid transparency agenda. ‘The standard […] is the set of internationally agreed-upon rules that govern the way that ships now all communicate.’ In other words, IATI’s standard is something to get all countries to talk about aid in the same language, and ‘enables data aggregators and other users of aid information to compare and merge aid information to get a clearer picture of the aid world.’
IMF working paper shows benefits of transparency in budget institutions
The working paper ‘Budget Institutions and Fiscal Performance in Low-Income Countries’ published in March by the International Monetary Fund constructs a new index that allows for benchmarking against the performance of middle-income countries, across regions, and according to different institutional arrangements that deliver good fiscal performance .
‘3 practical steps’ to aid transparency in the QDDR blog series
Karin Christiansen has outlined the importance of aid transparency in the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network’s Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review blog series, or ‘MFAN’s QDDR series’ for short.
Aid Information Challenge takes off in London
The first ever UK Aid Information Challenge took place last Saturday, 10th April in London at the Guardian newspaper. The aim was to see what would happen when aid data, aid practitioners, and some incredibly clever techies are brought together. Despite the sunshine outside, over 40 people joined us for 7 hours of enthusiastic "barcamping".