DFID gives guarantee for aid transparency

In May 2010 the new British Prime Minister wrote an open letter to all government urging them to open up data. "Greater transparency across Government" according to Cameron "is at the heart of our shared commitment to enable the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account; to reduce the deficit and deliver better value for money in public spending; and to realise significant economic benefits by enabling businesses and non-profit organisations to build innovative applications and websites using public data." Following this commitment of the Prime Minister to transparency, the British Development Ministry (DIFD) published an aid transparency guarantee on its website to allow British taxpayers and citizens in poor countries to hold them to account and to provide feedback on DFID services. DFID promises to provide detailed, comprehensible, accessible, comparable, accurate and timely data on its website including summary information in major local languages of aid recipient countries. The published data will be open for reuse - for example civil society organisations are free to use the data for their specific areas of interests and to make it easier for citizens to see where and how aid is being spent. Apart from opening up data DFID commits to providing opportunities for feedback by the beneficiaries of DIFD projects. Until now participation and ownership by beneficiaries in governmental aid projects has often been minimal. To implement feedback mechanisms is challenging - the move of DFID is a promising step in the right direction.