22.
U.S. – United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
Fair
OVERVIEW
USAID is the lead development agency in the U.S. and is the largest spending agency of U.S. ODA. See U.S.-wide commitments and recommendations.
USAID should be congratulated for publishing its first set of data to the IATI Registry in January 2013, including summary spend level data by sectors and countries. In July 2013, it published over 50,000 financial transactions to the IATI Registry. This new information, structured in line with the 2006 Foreign Assistance Framework, corresponds to awards (grants and contracts) given by the agency. A single award (designated as an activity in USAID’s IATI data) may support more than one project. USAID is investing in making information available on its activities through a number of different transparency initiatives.[1] Additionally, foreign assistance information is held and published by different projects and initiatives within the agency (e.g., the Development Experience Clearing House and AIDtracker). USAID is a partner in the Open Aid Partnership.
ANALYSIS
USAID scores 44.3%, placing it in the fair category. It performs well on organisation financial information and basic activity information but does poorly on performance data and the provision of project documents. USAID’s most recent IATI publication (July 2013) includes a number of new information elements such as actual dates, unique IDs, aid type, collaboration type, finance type, planned and actual expenditure and disaggregated budget. However, these relate to awards. Although this was a good step forward in terms of quantity of information, the data is hard to utilize as it is not linked to recognisable projects. Of the indicators measured by format, just under two thirds are published in machine-readable formats. USAID does not systematically and comprehensively publish information on forward-looking organisation budgets, activity costs, results, conditions or tied aid status in any format.
RECOMMENDATIONS
- USAID foreign assistance information, including the financial information published in July 2013, should be individually linked to each project, including its performance data, documentation and conditions. This may require the use of hierarchies in the IATI data to accurately reflect USAID’s business model. USAID should also link activity-related documents to its IATI data such as budget documents, contracts, evaluations, MoUs, objectives and tenders.
[1] For a discussion of the main efforts, see: http://www.usaid.gov/results-and-data/progress-data/transparency.
DONOR PROFILE
First published to IATI:
Jan-13
Data was found in the following formats where relevant:
64% IATI
0% CSV/Excel
9% PDF
9% Website
18% Not Published