3.
U.S. – Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC)
Very good
OVERVIEW
MCC is a U.S. foreign assistance agency providing large-scale, multi-year grants for global poverty reduction. The agency currently manages compacts and threshold programmes in 38 countries. See U.S.-wide commitments and recommendations.
In June 2013, MCC published information on all current Compacts and Thresholds in IATI XML, including planning, obligation and spending data on its Open Data Catalogue. In June 2014, this information was made available via the IATI Registry. MCC should be congratulated for continuing to publish high quality data and for publishing an ambitious implementation schedule – the first U.S. agency to publish an agency-specific plan for implementing IATI.
ANALYSIS
MCC scores 86.9%, placing it in the very good category. It ranks thirdoverall, and second out of 50 bilateral agencies in the 2014 Index. MCC continues to publish comprehensive information on its activities, including commitments, disbursement and expenditures and added-value fields such as project documents, results and conditions. It is the highest scoring donor on performance data, reflecting significant improvements in the quality and detail of its results data. MCC also publishes specific conditions alongside activities. It is one of the few donors to score on the budget ID, which aims to help align information on development flows with recipient country budget classifications, and disaggregated budgets, including information for three years ahead of the current fiscal year. The latter is in part due to MCC’s compact design, which extends for five fiscal years. It is the only U.S. agency that provides project-level documents and both forward-looking organisation budgets and disaggregated budgets in its IATI files. Four indicators – flow type, aid type, finance type and tied aid status – could not be assessed automatically for the Index as the activities for which these are available do not contain dates and therefore could not be identified as “current” projects.[1] MCC is one of the few organisations to score on all 39 indicators. Of the 22 indicators that take format into account, all are published in machine-readable format.
[1] These indicators are published in activities above the level of a compact in each country, e.g. “MCC Tanzania”. These activities do not contain any dates as they do not pertain to a specific unit of aid. The classifications should have been placed on the relevant compact.
RECOMMENDATIONS
- MCC should continue to improve its publication to IATI so it is comprehensive and includes information on sub-national location, forward-looking budgets and links to contracts and tenders for all activities.
- MCC should ensure that the quality and integrity of its data is maintained and updated at least quarterly.
- MCC should continue to champion aid transparency and promote the use of its IATI data by developing a plan for systematic outreach to stakeholders including Millennium Challenge Accounts and local partners.
DONOR PROFILE
First published to IATI:
Jan-13
2013 ATI Score:
88.88%
2013 ATI Rank:
1