19.
Netherlands – Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Fair
OVERVIEW
The Netherlands was one of the first donors to begin publishing to IATI in September 2011. The MFA publishes monthly to the IATI Registry through an automated process and uses the data externally for reporting to the FSS and the CRS. Its IATI information is also made available through an open source web platform – openaid.nl. In June 2014 the government launched a new budget webpage, which enables users to track the Dutch aid budget down to the delivery of projects in-country. Linked to this, organisations supported by the MFA (including CSOs, multilaterals and private sector partners) will be required to publish their data according to the full IATI Standard by the end of 2015. As an EU Member State, the Netherlands is part of the EU’s collective commitment to both the EU Transparency Guarantee and the Busan common standard, of which IATI is a core component. It has joined OGP but its National Action Plan does not include any commitments specific to aid transparency. It has also endorsed the Open Aid Partnership. It is the chair of the IATI Steering Committee and co-chair of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC), along with Malawi and Mexico. For more on the Netherlands’ publication approach, see box 3 of the Index report.
ANALYSIS
The Netherlands scores 53.8% and ranks seventh out of 50 bilaterals. Although there has been an increase of four percentage points in its overall score since the 2013 ATI, there has been a relative decline in its ranking due to more comprehensive publication by other organisations. It performs well on basic activity, classification and financial data, and is the top performer within the fair category on these indicator sub-groups. Since 2013, its IATI publication has been expanded to include forward-looking budgets and geo-coded location data. It performs less well on the provision of project documents and performance information (results, conditions and impact appraisals), particularly the latter, which it does not publish consistently enough to score. However, since the end of June 2014, the Netherlands has started publishing project assessment documents for new activities. It does not include links to most of the planning documents in its IATI organisation file, although these are available elsewhere. Country strategies are published, but these were not coded in accordance with the IATI Standard at the time of data collection, although this has since been corrected. Of the 22 indicators that take format into account, the MFA publishes 19 in machine-readable formats. Overall it scores on 30 of the 39 indicators.
RECOMMENDATIONS
- The Netherlands should continue to improve its publication to IATI so it is comprehensive and includes more planninginformation in its organisation file, links to activity documents and data on results and conditions.
- It should continue to support its implementing partners, including NGOs and private sector contractors, with publishing to IATI and improving traceability down the aid delivery chain.
- It should continue to promote the access and use of its aid information by others.
- The Netherlands should continue to champion aid transparency in international fora in its roles as chair of the IATI Steering Committee and co-chair of the GPEDC, ensuring that the Busan commitments on aid transparency and IATI best practice inform discussions on the post-2015 agenda.
DONOR PROFILE
First published to IATI:
Sep-11
2013 ATI Score:
49.37%
2013 ATI Rank:
16