Canada makes transparency announcement from Busan
Exciting news from Busan, where Canada’s Minister for International Cooperation, Beverly Oda, has just announced that Canada has joined the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).
This brings the total number of IATI signatories up to 23, including 13 bilateral donors, seven multilateral organisations, two global programmes and one foundation. Together, IATI signatories account for two-thirds of official development flows.
Canada has been involved in IATI from the outset as an observer – the decision to join shows that IATI is gaining momentum.
We’d like to congratulate Engineers Without Borders Canada, who have campaigned tirelessly for Canada to join IATI, and have shown their commitment to “walk the talk” by becoming one of the first NGOs to publish their own data to the IATI Registry.
The aidinfo team at Development Initiatives have helped to develop and promote IATI because we believe that publication of aid information to a common, open standard will help everyone involved in the aid business do their jobs better, and ensure that aid achieves maximum impact on poverty.
Access to aid information is also essential for parliaments, civil society organisations and citizens who want hold their governments to account for public expenditure – whether they are tax-payers in donor countries who want to ensure value for money, or representatives of communities receiving aid, who want to be able to track aid spending on the ground to ensure that funds reach those they are intended for.
It’s clear from our recent case studies in Kenya that citizens and CSOs are increasingly demanding this information, and that organisations such as the Social Development Network (SODNET) are using the tools and networks available to people on the ground -including SMS, radio, church groups - to monitor service-delivery, and pass on complaints to policy-makers via the internet.
This confirms that there is real demand for better aid information at country level, and that when people have access to that kind of information, they know how to use it.
IATI has the potential to make that information available to them – what we need now is for more donors to embrace IATI’s approach and sign up to the initiative – we hope that others will do so this week in Busan.
