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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.

Crowdsourcing has proven to be an effective tool to come up with new ideas - to open up information about how aid is delivered currently is a precondition for creative ideas to come up. Any form of participation and involvement of different members of society in development cooperation needs transparency.

To harness the power of transparency the Swedish Open Aid process includes five projects. The first project is a transparency guarantee - similar to the transparency guarantee given by the British Ministry for development cooperation DFID. In line with the International Aid Transparency Initiative the transparency guarantee promises open, accessible, detailed and comparable data on aid. The second project focuses on anti-corruption measures, e.g. corruption should be discussed more freely with partner countries. To inform the public in donor and recipient countries about corruption cases is unfortunately not yet envisaged - a missed opportunity for more transparency. The third project considers minimum standards for responsible bilateral aid. The question of this project is basically: At what point will SIDA pull out? Another project promotes the involvement of more stakeholders in Swedish development cooperation, particularly private businesses and citizens. Finally, a fifth project addresses three issues that are highly valued in Swedish society and that according to SIDA should be reflected in Swedish development cooperation: freedom of oppression, the promotion of women and the use of information technology.