137 programmers and software developers filled the offices of Washington’s Sunlight Foundation this weekend. It’s an ad hoc assembly of technology types eager to help out Haiti. People are able to help with aspects of relief from identifying places for the geolocation team, to language translation.
A $10 billion bailout for Dubai from oil-rich Abu Dhabi, announced in December, is actually half that size, a Dubai government spokeswoman said Monday, raising questions about the United Arab Emirates’ plans for playing down Dubai’s mountain of debt. Dubai has been criticized for a lack of transparency around the debt restructuring. In response, it announced earlier this month a new media office to coordinate the emirate’s communications strategy.
Below is a copy of Alan Beattie’s Financial Time article on the Copenhagen conference on climate change.
By Alan Beattie
Aid Data is a new joint initiative, merging the databases of Project-Level Aid (PLAID) and Accessible Information on Development Activities (AIDA).
AidData is trying to increase the value of data by providing more accurate and descriptive information, strenghtening the strategive planning and co-ordination abilities of both donors and recipients.
The draft agenda, still subject to change, is now available for the workshop taking place in Oxford on the 22nd-25th of March 2010.
The Conservative Party is desperate to indicate that it is no longer the nasty party and the proof is that it will commit itself to spending 0.7 per cent of the nation’s wealth on overseas aid. At a time when everyone, finally, has acknowledged that large cuts to spending are inevitable, is it eccentric for the Conservative Party to draw a ring around development and demand that it be exempt from scrutiny?
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On January 7, 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered a pivotal speech on “Development on the 21st Century”. Secretary Clinton laid out six approaches the U.S. is taking to tackle development around the world. It is notable that a number of these require great aid transparency to be achieved. Particularly perhaps the stated need to holding agencies accountable in delivering meaningful results and the stress on the importance of agency coordination to avoid duplication and projects overlapping on the field.
