In his Wednesday 22nd speech to the UN, President Obama announced a new U.S. Global Development Policy. The policy focuses on fostering economic growth and good governance, investment in innovation and research, placing emphasis on sustainable public sectors and the provision of basic services, and holding recipients of U.S. assistance accountable for achieving development results.
Yesterday, 23rd September, Congressman Howard L. Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, joined President Obama in making foreign aid reform a priority in alleviation of poverty.
A conversation between David Lane, President and CEO of ONE, and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah on 16th September addressed the important issue of coordination in U.S. foreign assistance. Part of the Bureau of Public Affairs’ “Conversations with America” series, Lane and Shah discussed how best to manage the 26 U.S government agencies involved in development programs.
The U.S. government has significantly reduced the backlog of Freedom of Information requests in the last year, but has been slow to act in other areas related to government secrecy, according to a new secrecy report card by The Sunlight Foundation yesterday, 8th September, launched Clearspending.com, a site analysing how well U.S. government agencies are reporting their spending data on USASpending.gov. A debate has ensued online after Till Brucker’s guest post on the Aid Watch blog on NGO transparency in Georgia. After having asked USAID to release budget details of NGOs operating in Georgia, he was sent the information (18 months later) with varying costs and totals blacked out.Sunlight Foundation shows real levels of U.S. transparency
Who is responsible for USAID transparency?
