The Department for International Development (DfID) has released their new Project Information database. The database, which comes in response to DfID’s 2009 White Paper promise, aims “to improve aid transparency in line with the commitments made through the International Aid Transparency Initiative”.

Press Release

Publish What You Fund

The Global Campaign for Aid Transparency

www.publishwhatyoufund.org

Digital Britain Report, one of the central policy documents in the Government’s Building Britain’s Future plan, has noted the need to “deliver a single online point of access for all UK datasets [and] bring forward specific proposals to make public data more accessible and useful”.

The report recommended the creation of a data service, akin to the US data.gov website which ‘will expose Government feeds in a well-ordered and useful way”.

A report on US Aid to Pakistan has identified the lack of aid transparency as a major factor undermining the effectiveness of US military and development efforts in Pakistan.

The report comes as a first attempt to present “an overview of US aid to Pakistan, evaluate it, and present recommendations on how to ensure that mistakes are not repeated and lessons learned” from its previous lack of aid monitoring and co-ordination in the country.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation have published a new assessment paper in a self-analysis of their aid effectiveness levels.

The assessment, Can Aid Agencies Follow Best Practices?, was based on the work of Easterly and Puftze who, in their 2008 paper: Where Does the Money Go? Best and Worst Practices in Foreign Aid, created a framework for assessing the performance of foreign assistance institutions which includes aid transparency practices.

A new aid reform bill, The Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act of 2009, introduced by Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations, calls for full US government participation in the International Aid Transparency Initiative.

Press Release

Publish What You Fund

The Global Campaign for Aid Transparency

www.publishwhatyoufund.org

US Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry, has taken an important step towards comprehensive foreign aid reform with the introduction of the Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act of 2009.

The introduced bill proposes "to strengthen the capacity, transparency, and accountability of United States foreign assistance programs to effectively adapt and respond to new challenges of the 21st century”.