Sweden launches Openaid.se
Transparency is the new key word for development aid – Gunilla Carlsson, Swedish Minister for Development Cooperation
There was a ripple of excitement around the aidinfo office yesterday as Sweden announced the launch of Openaid.se – an effort by the Swedish government to show how their aid is spent.
A joint project from the Swedish International Development Cooperation (SIDA) and the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Openaid.se documents Sweden’s commitment to making aid more transparent. This is a huge achievement and something that Sweden should be congratulated for.
Openaid.se have placed a firm emphasis on pushing transparency throughout the implementation chain. This starts when aid is disbursed by donors and ends the moment it arrives at its intended destination. The benefits of such a transparent system are obvious; it opens up the entire aid process, it encourages more scrutiny of how money is spent, it enables aid recipients to give feedback and offers opportunities for new ideas on aid to emerge. It also means that governments are better equipped to tackle corruption at all levels.
Alongside the launch of the website is a pledge from Carlsson that Openaid.se represents a transparency guarantee from Sweden. The promise of this guarantee was launched earlier last year. The value of it now lies in the site’s publication of SIDA’s aid information in the coming months. This will cover activities from donors and recipient partners, as well as amounts of aid and its subsequent results.
Information on Swedish aid spending from 2007 to 2010 has been published. Alongside this sits historical information dating back to the 1970s.
All this data is broken down into three distinct sections:
- Where aid goes
- How aid is used
- Who is involved
And what of IATI? The International Aid Transparency Initiative asks signatories, of which Sweden is one, to release their data in an IATI compliant format. Openaid.se is not yet doing this, but SIDA has promised that it will do so in future. It’s thought however, that the current format of data on Openaid.se should mean it is a relatively easy and painless process to make it IATI compliant… another bit of good news for aid transparency advocates then!
