In a post on transparency 2.0, Nick Troiano at SocialGovernment.com reflects on a discussion featured by the National Conference on Citizenship, entitled “In Transparency, We Trust?" Nick states that participation is key to this concept. He argues that “a window between the people and their government” is no longer enough.
In this article, Chad Dobson argues that the current financial crisis highlights the need for transparency and accountability, stressing that a “dearth of lucidity and public information (and the accompanying corruption that breeds in dark corners) is, in part, what led the sheep to the slaughterhouse”.
On Wednesday 22nd April, Karin Christiansen and Marcus Roberts of Publish What You Fund took the floor at an MFAN advocacy meeting to discuss our new paper on aid transparency. The meeting was called to mobilise support for ChairmanSenator Howard Berman’s (Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee) forthcoming introduction of stand-alone legislation that will include a call for a National Strategy for Global Development.
The UNECA-OECD 2009 ‘Mutual Review of Development Effectiveness’ (MRDE) has been published and can be read here. The report examines progress made towards commitments both by Africa and within the wider international community. Whilst Publish What You Fund welcomes the fact that the report reiterates the need for greater aid transparency, we also note that the production of such reports would be much easier if donors increased their levels of information disclosure.
In this article, published in the Canadian foreign policy newsletter ‘Embassy’, Danny Howard, director of outreach for the Canadian NGO Engineers Without Borders, stresses the lack of transparency around CIDA’s recent shifts in aid destinations and calls for the government to explain its decisions.
A new Oxfam report on aid to Afghanistan argues that lack of aid transparency is one of the key factors behind aid in the region being wasted or used ineffectively.
