A brilliant initiative has recently been launched by InterAction and FortiusOne which will create a standard output format allowing NGO development projects to be easily mapped and compared – exactly the sort of approach and tools we need for aid transparency more widely.
‘Capacity for Change: Reforming U.S. Assistance Efforts in Poor and Fragile Countries’ describes the context for reform and examines the key issues for decision by policymakers in an effort to inform a coherent and effective national approach to both stabilization and broader development. It concludes with a set of recommendations and practical next steps, with the points referring to aid transparency below (bolding added).
p.35 – From ‘Aligning Strategy and Capacity – Key Questions’.
‘Publishing What We Learned’, recently written by Mabel van Oranje and Henry Parham, discusses the origins and evolution of Publish What You Pay from 2002 to 2007. The Publish What You Pay coalition was founded in 2002 by a small, ad hoc group of London-based NGO representatives to tackle the ‘resource curse’ by campaigning for greater transparency and accountability in the management of revenues from the oil, gas and mining industries.
This year’s Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) is taking place in London on 24th April 2010. There are still tickets left – and you can register at the following link:
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.
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.
