This blog by James Deane mentions Publish What You Fund as one of several growing accountability initiatives targeted at donors and other development actors. It discusses the challenges to such initiatives, such as lack of demand for information and the incomprehensible formats information is presented in.

This third edition of ‘OECD Regions at a Glance’ gives the latest comparable data and trends on competitiveness and performance across OECD regions, providing information at the sub-national level, alon with graphs and maps. This edition has a special focus on the spatial dimension for innovation. It is based on the OECD Regional database, the most comprehensive set of comparable statistics on demography, economic and labour market performance, education, healthcare, environmental outputs and knowledge-based activities at the sub-national level.

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.