ANALYSIS

Overall, State scores 38.8%, placing it in the poor category. It ranks 18^th out of 50 bilateral organisations. It scores more on basic activity information than on any other sub-group of indicators and performs well on commitments, disbursements and expenditures. Overall however, the quality of its IATI publication is poor. Most activities lack specific project titles or adequate project descriptions and some lack activity dates entirely. State does not publish either performance information (results, conditions and impact appraisals) or project documents consistently for all its activities. It also does not publish forward-looking budgets disaggregated by recipient country. Although it publishes information about the location of its activities, the information is not disaggregated to the sub-national level in its IATI files. Most of the fields in State’s IATI data relate to individual transactions, making the data hard to utilise as it is not linked to recognisable projects. It does not score on 14 of the 39 indicators. Of the 22 indicators that take format into account, over half are published in machine-readable formats.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• The State Department should improve the quality of its publication to the Dashboard and IATI. The most basic elements such as titles, descriptions and dates should be prioritised.
• The State Department’s foreign assistance information, including financial information, should be individually linked to each project and should include performance data and project documents.
• The Department should publish a complete organisation file including forward-looking budgets and planning documents.

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