Publish What You Fund today welcomed the news that a common, open standard for publishing aid information has now been agreed by the OECD Working Party on Aid Effectiveness. The final meeting of the group, which includes donors, recipients and civil society, aimed to ensure that the international commitments made last year at Busan were carried forward.

At the event in Paris, it was also announced that UK Development Secretary of State Andrew Mitchell will co-chair the new Global Partnership.

Mitchell said, “The commitment to transparency in Busan was very clear – both by the donors but also by other actors. Impressive progress already made, and I congratulate you on yesterday endorsing a common, open standard.”

He added that that he will use the co-chair position “to ensure we keep making progress on our transparency commitments” and stressed the need for implementation.

Publish What You Fund Director David Hall-Matthews said, “We are delighted the common, open standard has been agreed by all development actors.  This will help uniformly record aid spending across many different donors, making it possible to trace funding from source to results on the ground.

“Now the focus must be on implementing this standard. As a first step, donors are now committed to publishing their implementation schedules for the standard by the end of the year.”

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