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”.

In an article in the Seattle Times, members of the Initiative for Global Development Leadership Council – Gerald Grinstein and William D. Ruckelshaus – highlighted the need for US foreign assistance to be accountable and transparent.

The UN Millennium Development Goals 2009 Report has recognised the need to improve the availability of data and the building of a stronger statistical system. The report noted that “reliable, timely and internationally comparable data on the [Millennium Development Goals’] indicators are crucial to holding the international community accountable”.