International Development Agencies (IDA’s) including the European Union, the UK Department for International Development, and the World Bank will come together with Parliament, civil society, the media, and relevant stakeholders to keep them better informed about their plans and actions in the country. This is a brilliant step towards the manner of dialogue that Publish What You Fund is campaigning for. With conversation between donor agencies and the people of Guyana a two-way feedback can occur.

Due to a Supreme Court decision last week, more money than ever will be let into the US political system. However, the Court suggested an online transparency move in order that people may see who is buying and selling influence. This task has been taken up by the Sunshine Foundation, who aim to hire a policy expert to ensure political spending will become accessible to the public.

Every dollar will be matched by the Foundation. To go to the site, click here.

A brilliantly titled summary of the moves towards transparency made by the US, individual US states, and most recently the UK data.gov.uk site. Positive feelings towards a encouraging movement.

To read, click here.

Transparency International (T.I.) have claimed that out of $2.2 billion US recieved by the Sri Lankan governement for tsunami relief, $603.4 million was spent on unrelated projects, and another half a billion dollars is missing. T.I. are requesting an audit by the Sri Lankan government.

To read more, click here.

Global Financial Integrity have launched a Transparency petition to be signed by 100,000 people and presented to the G20 summit in Toronto, June 2010. The principle behind it: To ‘create a transparent global financial system that is open, accountable, fair and beneficial for all.’ This includes increasing aid transparency, particularly combatting the illicit outflows of money from developing countries, which have been estimated by the World Bank at around US$1 trillion annually.

Easterly highlights the difficultly we face in attemping to quantify and measure poverty. The indicators used to work out potential levels of extreme poverty are flawed; how useful are these statistics?

To read the article, click here.