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? Read more »
The future of aid is changing.
Last week, at an event in Washington DC, USAID announced plans to publish details of their aid programmes in a form accessible to people in developing countries, as well as their own taxpayers. And on Friday, the EU Foreign Affairs Council agreed that member states would publish details of their aid in an internationally comparable format.
This is a big deal, and something that we in the aid transparency world have been hoping will happen for a long time; it is a huge step forward in the path towards more effective aid.
It means that from next year, donors making up at least two thirds of aid to less developed countries will be publishing detailed, up to date information about aid through the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). The first part of this new global standard was agreed in July this year. The UK, which together with Sweden and the Netherlands has played a leading role in this initiative, will have its first data online next month. Many other donors, including the World Bank and the EC, will soon follow. Read more »
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 »
Hivos and the Omidyar Network have announced the launch of the Africa Transparency and Technology Initiative (ATTI). Omidyar’s plan to support this initiative comes from their investment goals in the area of Government Transparency, with intentions to dedicate up to $2million to ATTI over the next two years. Hivos will oversee this investment, taking up a role to administer the money into ATTI on Omidyar’s behalf.
The Omidyar Network invest in organisations providing technology and media platforms that enable citizens to participate in government processes, whilst also holding their governments to account. Over the last 2 years they have given over $23 million to firms, as part of their drive to further transparency in government. The idea behind ATTI is that, by supporting relevant technology-driven schemes, it will give citizens the tools to hold their governments to account. Read more »
Communicators in development are having a hard time in the days of "Dead Aid" and the "White man's burden". This became obvious at the annual meeting of the OECD-DAC network of development communicators this week in Helsinki. Luckily, the prison in Katajanoka in Helsinki, where the participants were lodged, was just a former prison and had been turned into the nice hotel since. However, the hard work of communicators is very real. Communicators in development are those people, whose job it is to communicate to the public what the ministries and government agencies of OECD countries are doing in development cooperation. They seem to face three major challenges:
The first challenge is a negative perception of development cooperation in the general public. As Nick Perkins from IDS (UK) illustrated for the case of the UK, a majority of people in OECD countries are in favour of their governments to fight poverty in poor countries. At the same time, however, development cooperation is often perceived as being ineffective and marred by corruption.
Development cooperation is not really high in the agenda for most citizens in donor countries. The financial crisis, the reform of the education sector and the news of the football championship are more likely to attract attention. When it comes to development cooperation there is weariness and a lot of scepticm in the general public. Each time I talk about my work with a local shop assistant, my neighbour, the hairdresser and other people in my environment, the inevitable question is "But does aid really reach the poor people?" In the past aid agencies have used pictures of starving children, of drought-striken landscapes and empoverished farmers to touch the compassion of people and to justify their work. But we have seen starving children so many times. Aid agencies have asked for our donations for so many years. Why are things not changing?
IATI, the International Aid Transparency Initiative started in September 2008 in Accra, is now open for business! In July 2010 the first decisive step ahead was made by the IATI Steering Committee, who adopted the standards for the first implementation phase. By now also the beta version of the registry for aid data is online and functioning, so that donors can upload data and thereby make it more accessible to a wider audience. The Worldbank, UNDP and DFID have been among the first to uploaded data. But also data from the Global Fund, the Netherlands and Spain can be found in the registry. The goal of IATI is for most signatories to publish some data via the registry until the next High Level Meeting in Busan in 2011.
We’re proud to announce the launch of our new website. We hope that the clean new look and easy navigation will make it simple for you to find useful information on aid transparency. To break down the different areas we work in we’ve categorised the site into three main themes: 1) Policy, 2) Data and 3) Technology. In each section you can browse opinions, reports and news that relates to your interests. We’ve given each theme an icon and colour reference so you can easily identify content. Although the site looks different you’ll be able to find much of the same information as on our old site. We have created a library of all our reports and case studies to date, with a glossary of common terms to help you through the minefield of acronyms. We also updated our calendar to keep track of national and international meetings where aid transparency may play a part. Read more »
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.
At the Accra High Level Forum in 2008 donors and aid recipients proclaimed „We will make aid more transparent“. The rational of this promise was, that transparency will increase aid effectiveness, curb corruption and enhance democratic participation of civil society. In fact, in recent years a number of authors and institutions have suggested that transparency can be a powerful tool to promote governance – in aid and in other areas of government. But how exactly does this tool work? What are the processes that transform access to information into better governance? And what are the conditions that need to be in place for these processes to „work“? In the following discussion I suggest, that there are four key elements that need to be considered for successful transparency initiatives: open data, transflation of data into information, feedback and action of civil society and change in government institutions. My objective is to start developing a mental map of transparency mechanisms which hopefully results in successful transparency strategies.
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.
Responding to long-held concerns about uncoordinated donor behavior, the Paris Declaration of 2005 made harmonization one of its five pillars, pledging to work towards “eliminating duplication of efforts and rationalising donor activities to make them as cost-effective as possible.” Among the problems of uncoordinated action are elevated transaction costs as recipient governments struggle to comply with variegated donor rules and procedures (Knack and Rahman 2007) and decreased donor specialization as “all donors seem to want to give to all sectors in all countries” (Easterly 2007). All of the attention given to coordination problems begs the questions: how much do donors coordinate their activities? And is coordination effectively targeting needs within a country – both spatially (aid to villages or provinces) and sectorally (aid for different purposes)?
There is a striking juxtaposition of two news stories today. First we have the ‘news’ that some Western aid to Afghanistan has been diverted out of the country: "The massive cash flown out of Afghanistan includes some diverted Western aid, according to preliminary evidence gathered by Afghan and U.S. investigators. ... The raid also collected documents that link prominent Afghan businessmen and politicians, including relatives of President Hamid Karzai, in the movement of some USD3.65 billion flown out of the Asian nation annually. While some of the money came from legitimate businesses, some was sourced from diverted Western aid and logistics money, opium profits, and Taliban funds, according to U.S. and Afghan investigators. ... Read more »
Within hours of Massachusetts Department of Transportation having opened up their transit data to the public, real-time bus locations were available on Google Earth. Within two days passengers could track bus locations on any internet connected computer. Within seven weeks real-time data could be accessed via mobile phones. Read more »
In July, representatives from international donor agencies, development country Governments and civil society organisations met in Paris to talk data. As topics go, it might not be the most riveting, especially among a group of interlocutors more used to discussing life-and-death issues that affect the poorest parts of the world. But agreed standards of data could be the tiny key which unlocks a very large gate on the path to more efficient, more effective aid. Read more »
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. Read more »
In 2008 Germany signed the International Aid Transparency Initiative(IATI)- a commitment of donors to provide timely, detailed, standardised data on development cooperation in an open and accessible way. The objective of IATI is to provide enable citizens in donor countries and particularly in recipient countries to hold donors and recipient countries to account for aid monies and to facilitate better planning of aid by recipient countries. Ultimately the purpose of IATI is to enhance aid effectiveness, curb corruption and promote ownership of all stakeholders.On the 7th of July the Steering Committee is meeting in Paris to decide on aid transparency standard for donors, which is will be a crucial in determining the success or failure of IATI. OpenAid is signatory to an open letter to Dirk Niebel and other ministers of donor countries urging him to follow up on Germany's commitment to aid transparency. We ask Minister Niebel to provide strong leadership on this issue and ensure that IATI becomes an important step in improviding aid effectiveness.Read the full letter.
A mental map
The mental map is so amazing. on the change box, I would recommend The government, civil society org and family, as institutions and the citizens as individuals. The change in transparency should impact on peoples minds and change the way they do think and do things, should change organizational settings both Govern, NGO and probably family settings,law decisions and policies. In Africa for example, transparency is not something to address from the government or cso levels, but it has got a very important root in family and cultural settings.