government

To be honest, I do not care too much, if the next High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan next month produces a strong commitment to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) or not. The future of aid transparency will not be decided in Busan. There are three reasons for this. Read more »

The reform of the Swedish Development Cooperation has a new name - Open aid! We very happy to share our NGO's name with SIDA and we welcome the initiative of Gunilla Carlsson to promote accountability and cooperation in Swedish aid. According to an official statement of the Swedish Government transparency will allow everybody to monitor Swedish Development cooperation and to hold the main stakeholders to account. But the merits of transparency go beyond accountability. Transparency will help SIDA to tap into the knowledge and creativity of a wide variety of stakeholders in the Swedish society.

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. Read more »