New Year's resolutions for Germany's development cooperation

The parties are over and many of us start the new year with reviews of last year's achievements and and good intentions for the future. Stock-taking has also been high on the agenda in Germany's development cooperation in the last months. The Center for Global Development (CDG) published two different assessments related to governmental development cooperation at the end of last year. The Commitment for Development Index ranks donor countries overall behaviour related to developing nations. Criteria for this ranking are trade, security and migration policies, investment in environment, aid and technology transfer as well as policies promoting investment in developing countries.

The same US-based think tank also offers a more detailed analysis of the quality of aid given by bilateral and multilateral donors on their QuODA (quality of aid) website. The four main criteria of the QuODA assessment are 1) Maximising Efficiency, 2) Fostering Institutions, 3) Reducing Burden and 4) Transparency and Learning. The study of PublishWhatYouFund, a British NGO, focusses exclusively on this last aspect of the QuODA ranking, the transparency of international donors. Finally, the OECD DAC peer review of Germany at the end of last year has analysed German development cooperation in detail and offered recommendations for the coming years. So how well is Germany doing in all these assessments?

And how well is Germany doing with regards to aid transparency, the issue that is our core interest at OpenAid? In the overall CDG assessment Germany ranks 14^th out of 22 donors with trade, investment, environment and migration policies being above average. Germany fairs worse than the average in security, in technology transfer and particularly in aid. The CDG QuODA assessment is not a ranking as such. Instead it evaluates the performance of each donor individually and indicates whether the donor is above or below average. Interestingly, Germany is a bit above average in transparency and learning as well as in fostering institutions. German aid is about average when it comes to reduce the burden of recipient countries in aid management but below average in relation to efficiency. Also the PWYF assessment is rather positive on Germany's performance on aid transparency. The OECD DAC peer review has very little to say about transparency, which in turn may tell us something about the value placed by the OECD DAC on aid transparency. The peer review report does state however, that German NGOs expressed concern about lack of transparency and insufficient information on aid flows (p. 36).

Our goal at OpenAid is aid transparency in Germany and other donor countries. How come we have been so critical about aid transparency in Germany, when evidently, Germany is doing quite ok?

As always with research data, the results obtained depend upon the questions asked. In the case of aid transparency it is true that the issue has been on the international agenda in recent years, but the standards for what is considered transparent development cooperation are still quite low. Don't get me wrong! These assessments are excellent tools to move the transparency agenda forward. The point is, that more ambitious indicators would of course produce much worse results for donor transparency.

In the PWYF study, for example, three equally weighted indicators are considered: commitment to aid transparency, transparency of aid to recipient governments and transparency of aid to civil society organisations. By meeting its reporting requirements to the OECD DAC database, the Creditor reporting system (CRS), by adopting a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and by actively participating at the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) Germany achieved a fairly good rating. While these aspects are very positive, it is important to note that the OECD DAC database does not provide current or forward looking data and it does not specify important details such as the name of implementing agencies and the exact geographic location of projects. It is exactly these shortcomings of the OECD DAC creditor reporting system, that also appear as weaknesses of Germany in the PWYF assessment: aid reported on budget, information about future aid and availability of specific information.

Likewise the existence of a FOIA is commendable, but it still requires German citizens to invest time and possible money to demand information instead of pro-actively providing it and excludes citizens in aid recipient countries. As for IATI, it is indeed extremely positive, that Germany signed the only existing initiative at the international level to develop an aid information standard and make aid data easily accessible. But the value of IATI depends on its implementation and recent signs, such as the German position of the IATI steering committee meeting in July 2010 or the lack of communication by the BMZ on this initiative are not encouraging.

The above-average rating of Germany in transparency and learning by the CDG is due to similar criteria. Being a member of IATI is one of the seven indicators rewarded by the rating system. Five of the seven indicators of the QuODA assessment measure compliance with the OECD DAC Creditor reporting system and do not go beyond its requirements. Germany is doing reasonably well in reporting to the OECD DAC, unlike many other donors. Since QuODA measures relative transparency as opposed to comparing transparency to an absolute standard, this puts Germany in a relatively comfortable position. But it does not mean that Germany is very transparent in absolute terms and meets the requirements of aid recipient countries and civil society organisations. The Accra Agenda for Action is very clear on the need for more aid transparency, particularly on the need for timely information on aid flows and conditions. Meeting the OECD DAC requirements is important, but it is not equivalent to meeting the commitments made by the German government in Accra four years ago.

Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To many people, the existing level of transparency may be acceptable. Personally, I am convinced of the importance of more transparency for aid effectiveness and for doing away with the scandalous level of poverty in many countries, so in my view a little transparency is just not good enough.

Development cooperation in Germany faces many challenges in the coming year. The merger of GTZ, INWENT and DED and meeting the Gleneagles commitments being certainly among the major ones. However, the next High Level Meeting in Busan in South Korea is around the corner and donors will have to answer for their accomplishments on the aid effectiveness agenda. On the 9^th of February the Steering Committee of IATI will meet in Paris to decide on which data and which documents donors should publish in a standardised form after Busan. What the New Year's resolution of the BMZ should be in this regard is very clear: Make aid more transparent (AAA, 24)!