Weblog von Claudia Schwegmann
The International Aid Transparency Initiative has set out to develop a data standard to increase transparency in international development cooperation and facilitate access to information. In the past year several online consultations have taken place to invite suggests and feedback on which data donors should publish and in which way. Currently the final round of consultation takes place on the IATI consultation page. Read more »
I spend a good part of my waking hours thinking about, writing and working on aid transparency. But quite frankly, aid transparency is only peanuts. Globally there are 30 countries who receive more than 10% of their gross national income (GNI) from aid (Worldbank 2008). For only 12 countries the amount of official aid exceeds 20% of their GNI. So in the context of development and global poverty alleviation tracking revenues in extractive industries and monitoring national budget is much more important.
But aid transparency is not only one of many factors influencing the global fight against poverty. We should regard aid transparency also as part of a broader open data movement. Open government initiatives in the UK, the USA, Greece, Finland and Brazil, and the adoption of freedom of information acts demonstrate that there is a shift in the relationship between citizens and government administration. Read more »
It is very hard to make predictions about the impact of a conference. But given all we know about aid effectiveness and the potential of transparency it is very likely, that yesterdays meeting of the Steering Committee of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) in Paris is indeed a milestone for effective aid and for accountability towards citizens. After nearly three years of work and consultations representatives of donor agencies, partner countries and civil society organisations came together yesterday to agree on a transparency standard. Read more »
Whenever I make presentations about aid transparency some people in the audience will inevitably ask: “But surely, you don't want to publish everything?” In a recent workshop on aid transparency one researchers in development policy explicitly warned against “full disclosure” - some negotiations in development cooperation require secrecy, he suggested. At another occasion people in the audience worried that publishing salary levels of expatriate staff or freelance consultants would cause a lot of criticism among beneficiaries. Read more »
People who argue for more transparency in development cooperation are often eager to point out all the merits of transparency. Unfortunately, often we are not very sure whether our claims are well founded. Even worse, there are very few examples who can illustrate how exactly „more transparency“ could look like. Read more »
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?
What are the current priorities of German development cooperation? In a presentation held at a conference on aid effectiveness, coherence and coordination in German development aid Harald Klein, a senior BMZ representative, highlighted the investment in education and the reduction of structural deficits as important goals for the BMZ. The other four key priorities according to Klein are the involvement of civil society and private business partners, the implementation of the Paris and Accra process and finally, visibility and communication. Unfortunately, visibility, in the German Realpolitik of aid, is not about making the details of German aid more visible. It is not about aid transparency. Instead, it is about pointing out to the German taxpayers, how the investment of German tax monies successfully alleviates poverty.
Many people in Pakistan are in trouble. Aid agencies are calling for more public and private donations. In the context of the current crisis in Pakistan a high-ranking staff member of the UN explains in the German weekly Die Zeit the context the complexity and the strategic importance of humanitarian aid as well as the need for global cooperation and for an increase in funding for humanitarian aid. What is really interesting about this, is the number and the kind of reader comments sparked by the relatively uncontroversial article.
Can transparency really reduce corruption in development aid? A very well known study by Reinikka and Svensson about the public funding of primary schools in Uganda suggests that the publication of budget details contributed to reducing leakage (money lost in the system) from about 80% to 20%. The system, that was actually used in Uganda was Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS). A study published by the Anti-Corruption Resource Centre U4 highlights the conditions for budget tracking to reduce corruption.
Information is the hard currency of politics. Therefore transparency in development cooperation is not just about technical changes in data bases. Because access to information is highly political, OpenAid is convinced that public awareness and public pressure is necessary to promote aid transparency. In order to reach out to the wider community of development practitioners we have therefore decided to create an OpenAid page on Facebook and an Aid Transparency Forum on Linkedin. 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.
OpenAid is happy to announce its newest team member.
We are still small, but we are growing and we are happy that Dorosella Bishanga Ferdinand has joined the OpenAid team. Dorosella is from Tanzania and passionate about how domestic stakeholders including civil society can promote accountability and democratic governance.
The International Aid Transparency Initiative will be deciding on the first phase of opening up standardised donor data on July 7th. In a recent futuregov article valuable insights on open data and cultures of openness by David McClure, one of the founders of data.gov are summarised. Open Data, McClure argues, should not just be add on for governments. Open Data will not be able to change much, if the organisational cultures of organisations and governments that free their data do not change correspondingly.
Transparency creates trust. NGOs dependent on private donations need this trust. Therefore the German Network of NGOs working development and environmental issues (VENRO) supports a national initiative for a transparent civil society. According to a VENRO press release of June 23rd this initiative brings together nine German networks and organisations and consists of a commitment to publish ten information items.
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 »
Advocacy and Transparency as Levers for Aid Effectiveness There is a lot of hype at the moment to promote Rigorous Impact Evaluations in order to improve aid effectiveness. One line of argumentation goes that there is a lack of knowledge and rigorous impact evaluations will provide valuable knowledge about what works and what doesn't. The other line of argumentation is that more rigorous impact evaluation will provide transparency as to who is doing good work and who isn't. This will increase the control of tax payers and donor governments and weed out ineffective aid. Read more »
OpenAid is now member of the technical advisory group to the International Aid Transparency Initiative! We will participate at the TAG meeting and the AidData conference in Oxford in March.