Chatham House has released a report, ‘Organizing for Influence: UK Foreign Policy in an Age of Uncertainty’, which highlights open data as a necessary component of a much-needed UK foreign policy reform.
On Thursday 3rd June the Department for International Development made a commitment to a new ‘UKaid Transparency Guarantee’.
London – Publish What You Fund yesterday welcomed the announcement of a new “Aid Transparency Guarantee” by the UK Government. The Guarantee promises that “aid information will be made fully transparent to citizens in both the UK and recipient countries”. Implementing these standards in the UK and advocating for other donors to adopt the same will result in a significant increase in aid effectiveness.
The Prime Minister, David Cameron, has instructed all Government departments to act on the coalition’s promise of increased transparency in Government data. The Prime Minister’s May 31st letter stated:
‘The Coalition: our programme for government’ was released today, 20th May 2010. We welcome the new government’s focus on increasing aid transparency as set out in Chapter 18 (p.22) on International Development, which starts by introducing its priority to ‘ensure much greater transparency and scrutiny of aid spending to deliver value for money for British taxpayers and to maximise the impact of our aid budget’.
As Andrew Mitchell becomes the UK’s International Development Secretary, Liz Ford lays out what we can expect from this government department in the Guardian’s Katine blog.
