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Aid Transparency in Nepal

Rhys — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 12:13:54 +0000

In the second of our series of blogs on Nepal, Hum Prasad Bhandari of NGO Federation of Nepal shares his thoughts on the potential of aid transparency and the challenges faced by NGOs and civil society organisations. Foreign aid plays an important role in Nepal's development. According to the 2010-11 Development Cooperation Report, foreign aid represents 20% of the national budget. On-budget aid is said to be three-quarter of the total aid that comes to Nepal. However, information on aid is poor in Nepal since it lacks transparency, coordinating agency and the systematic collection of data and publication. In addition, information that is available is often not accessible to NGOs and there is a need for capacity development. The Ministry of Finance has Foreign Aid Coordination Division to oversee the Government's activities in the area of aid coordination, harmonization and alignment. Within the Ministry, Aid Management Platform (AMP), the online information system, has been operationalised, but is not publicly available. Development partners are given access and requested to report their information on aid but the process is still in the initial stages. Presently, all the donors and Ministries and only 13 NGOs are given access to the database. Likewise, the Social Welfare Council (SWC) is responsible for overseeing and managing the domestic and international non-governmental organisations (NGO’s and INGO’s respectively). Although not mandatory, most of the NGOs and INGOs get their projects endorsed and approved from SWC. In this context, SWC is likely to collect a lot of information on aid. Since AMP and SWC systems lack coordination, any integrated and complete information on aid is unavailable in Nepal. Most of the development partners, government agencies and NGOs claim to have publicised their information relating to aid. However, the information, if publicized at all, lays scattered, disintegrated and without standard formats. In this case, searching for complete and reliable information on aid is futile. Against this backdrop, NGO Federation of Nepal, with financial support from aidinfo, made an attempt to assess the availability and need of aid information, and the incentives and challenges to providing aid information to the NGOs in Nepal. The pilot study was carried out from December 2011 to May 2012. The study has been insightful in understanding—from the perspective of NGOs—the availability of information on aid in Nepal. The NGOs were found lacking awareness about the transparency of aid. More than 90% of NGOs in Nepal seem to have come into existence only after the democratic political change in 1990. The fact that about one-third of the NGOs started their work with foreign aid also signifies that Nepalese NGOs largely depend on foreign aid and seek foreign aid because they lack internal resources. The NGOs largely depend on newspapers, followed by websites, for any information on aid. Although the information found in the newspapers is incomplete, most of them lack access to the internet and may not be fluent in English, which is the language used by almost all the web sources. In terms of the accessibility and availability of information on aid, 89% of the NGO responded that available information is inadequate. While more than half of them find the information partially useful, only 41% of them find it useful. The responses show that aid information may be useful to the NGOs to find out the achievements, accountability, and objectives of aid, the eligibility of organisations for support, the types of support available and contact details of the funding agencies. Nepal lacks coordinated efforts and agencies to make aid information transparent. While AMP has initiated an online database system, it needs close coordination with SWC to include more information of NGOs and INGOs. AMP also needs to be publicly available in order to encourage the voluntary input of information and to make it publicly accessible. It is indeed necessary that the data on aid is made transparent in an integrated and open format, or to some international standard like the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). While the respondents preferred the integrated information coordinated by some agencies such as SWC, government or any NGO, they also suggested that the concerned agencies also make the information available. When it comes to the transparency of the aid information of the NGOs themselves, it is still in the basic level and format. They publish information through some social audits and bulletins but they lack a standard format and NGOs do not see any advantages in doing so. Transparency of aid, programs and budgets appear to be crucial in increasing their credibility and these are directly linked to the aid transparency with donors, INGOs and government and will contribute to improving misconception that people have about the NGO’s. Standardised information would be an ideal. For the time being, Ministry of Finance, SWC and District Development Committee can be the coordinating agencies for aid information. The Ministry can coordinate for the on-budget aid and SWC may coordinate for the NGOs, INGOs and off-budget aid. It is indeed important to consider that the available data is in open format such as IATI. Hum (centre) discusses the NGO Federation findings with colleagues Different agencies need to play their own roles to promote aid transparency and effectiveness. The Ministry can facilitate, coordinate and monitor aid. SWC must be able to integrate and manage the information of NGOs and INGOs. It is equally important that development partners are cooperative and ready to provide the relevant information and are proactively transparent and accountable. They need to follow the internationally agreed agreements and principles on aid and international development. Likewise, the potential role for NGO Federation of Nepal is the advocacy, lobbying and monitoring on behalf of the civil society organizations (CSO’s). It can mediate dialogues and interactions among the government, development partners and CSOs/NGOs. In addition to the transparency of aid, it is equally important that NGOs/CSOs are able to access, analyze, monitor and advocate for the accountability and effectiveness of aid and aid information and that they are given the necessary capacity development to do so. Development effectiveness is vitally important, and NGO Federation of Nepal can be an appropriate platform for this purpose. Hum Prasad Bhandari is the Information, Communication & Documentation Officer for the NGO Federation of Nepal (NFN). NFN is an umbrella organisation for NGOs in Nepal with over 5000 affiliated organisations and works to defend the autonomy of NGOs and to promote human rights, social justice and pro-poor development. Hum may be contacted by email on hum@ngofederation.org

How do you improve information for poverty elimination?

Alex Beech — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 15:07:10 +0000

This blog was originally posted on the Development Initiatives (DI) website on 14 June. Aidinfo and the DI Africa hub worked together to set these workshops up. You can view the original post here.

There is a growing realisation that increased transparency (and particularly resource transparency) is not necessarily leading to increased use of information, accountability and better use of resources. Key users of information in Africa, such as Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), policy makers and citizens, still face challenges in accessing, analysing and using information on resources for poverty elimination (predominantly aid and budget resources).

A united approach We, at Development Initiatives (DI), believe that increased access and use of information can lead to better resource allocation. We plan to document information challenges at country level as well as build the capacity of core users to potentially make information on resources more useful. As part of this effort, on May 15 and 16 2012, we held a two-day workshop on programme design at the Silver Springs Hotel, Nairobi. The workshop brought together those working in the education and reproductive health sectors in Kenya and Uganda, with a total of 42 participants. Our main aim was to initiate an 18-month capacity development programme, facilitated by our East Africa hub and aidinfo programme. Key learnings from these two days centred around issues on access, analysis and use of information.

The objectives were:

To share their organisations’ experiences of accessing, analysing and using information about resources for poverty reduction (particularly budget and aid information).
To understand the challenges and opportunities for participating organisations in using available information to engage in discussions about effective use of resources.
To develop a vision and preliminary strategy for the programme. This will support organisations in using information and will also document programme learning and impact.

The purpose of the capacity development programme is to strengthen the analysis and use of information about resources for poverty elimination amongst the participants. In advance of the initial workshop, we held a series of consultative meetings with participants. These helped develop the workshop structure and allowed us to understand their objectives and need for support.

What we learnt

Participants identified a number of challenges in term of access, analysis and use of information. This included, amongst other things, the lack of timely and comprehensive information available. Participants also raised issues around CSO’s limited resources (both time and money), which hinder their capacity to access and analyse useful information. This means that CSOs are unable to use the information they need to engage with decision makers on better resource allocation and prioritisation.

Some potential solutions for these challenges include:

Advocating for open data platforms from national governments and donors.
Strengthening existing platforms and conducting training programmes and developing skills.
Commissioning and funding joint research initiatives and encouraging organisations to share their findings and data, adopting a common approach.
Increased focus on policy analysis and a strengthened civil society voice through networks, engagement and coalitions.

The workshop provided a valuable opportunity to develop the programme design and ensure that it meets the needs of participants. A post-workshop evaluation found that participants were committed to working together in the future and to developing their ideas further.

What next?

Based on our learnings from the workshop, the core objectives of the programme are:

To increase use of information about resources for poverty reduction by civil society and other key stakeholders.
To document the impact of increased use of information about resources for poverty reduction by civil society and other stakeholders.
To document the programme approach to building the capacity of civil society and other stakeholders and to share key learnings with others.

Our new Capacity Development Manager will lead on the development and implementation of this programme. The next step is to design the specific details of the programme and work closely with the participating organisations.

Workshop material

For more details on the workshop please download the full report, which includes the list of participating organisations, as well as an executive summary.

Learnings on aid transparency in Nepal

Victoria Room — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 10:35:20 +0000

This week we’re in Kathmandu piloting a training course we’ve developed over the last year with International Budget Partnership, Tiri and Publish What You Fund. It’s been a fantastic learning process to draw on the skills and experience of these organisations. The course is aimed at NGOs in aid-receiving countries. It covers how to access, analyse and use aid and budget information to support advocacy work. It also gives an introduction to aid and aid actors, and has a module on the aid transparency agenda. Over the last four years we’ve heard repeated demands from NGOs for increased support to use information and that demand has been further articulated by our partners here in Nepal. We’re looking forward to getting feedback from our partners and refining the course further for a launch later in the year... If you would like more information on the training, please contact Victoria – victoria@devinit.org

Organisations move towards greater transparency

Alex Beech — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 09:32:26 +0000

Congratulations to the 18 organisations who published their spending information on Friday 1^st June 2012 to an internationally agreed common standard, the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). The move comes as part of the requirements that their funder, the Department for International Development (DFID), has placed on many of its fundees to become more open and transparent. An ever-increasing trend This latest wave of publishing follows a rapidly expanding movement. Recent publishers to IATI include Oxfam, The International HIV/AIDS Alliance and CAFOD, along with government donors such as the United Kingdom, Sweden and The Netherlands. Since February 2011, 45 organisations have published their information to IATI, with more working towards releasing their data. The many benefits of transparency Transparency has many benefits. By publishing their information in this way, organisations are ensuring it can be used, compared and re-purposed to meet many different needs. Studies have shown that when aid recipients are able to access data about the services they have been promised, they are more able to hold service providers to account. This, in turn, improves the provision of services they receive. And there are benefits for publishers too. The commitment to publish encourages organisations to improve their internal systems. This ensures that data is more detailed, accurate and timely. Organisations that have already published acknowledge that because the data will become public, they focus on making it more accurate and accessible. A simplified process The process of publishing this data has been simplified through the use of the online platform AidStream. AidStream enables those wishing to publish aid data to IATI to do so easily, whilst hiding the complexities and technicalities of raw data. Once registered on the system, organisations are able to enter their data, store it, make changes to it and publish it in the IATI Registry. There’s more to come This current publication of data is a good thing, but there is still a way to go. For this information to be fully useful to aid recipients in developing countries, it needs to cover where all funds for development are coming from, not just those from one donor (such as DFID). This information will come with time. In April 2013, more organisations, including most of the larger ones funded by DFID, are required to begin publishing their information on a quarterly basis. In the not too distant future, we expect to see more organisations and donors publishing their information in this format. This will increase the quality of all IATI data, improving its usefulness to those key stakeholders. While the data currently published is available in xml format, it will become more accessible with time. IATI data is open, standardised and machine readable. This means that technical users can convert it into databases, spreadsheets, web applications, printed documents or data visualisations. And as the amount of IATI data increases, information intermediaries will develop new applications that will help users access IATI information in ways that are meaningful to them. This process has already begun; the IATI Data Explorer allows you to choose specific sets of aid activities to view in depth. The Guardian Global Development website has a helpful array of visualisations based on donor’s data. And keep an eye out for AidView in the coming months, our new IATI data platform. We’re now at the stage where we need to start using this data effectively, so that it can have a real impact on the lives of aid beneficiaries. The applications mentioned above play a big part in all of this, but we need to go further to ensure that this step towards transparency can result in more effective aid. To view the raw xml data, visit the IATI registry.

Can lessons from aid transparency improve climate finance?

Alex Beech — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:52:46 +0000

Today we've launched a new study with Publish What You Fund that examines the intersection between aid transparency and climate finance. As countries start to report on their climate funding, researchers are poring over the results to make sense of the funding flows; Are pledges being delivered? Is the money new and additional? Does it add up and how should it be measured? A key lesson from aid transparency is that while high quality statistics are crucial, so too is detailed, accessible and timely information to meet the needs of different information users – international, national and local. As climate finance begins to flow in earnest, and in larger volumes, the key questions will not just be ‘Are developed countries meeting their commitments?’ but ‘Are resources being effectively used in addressing climate change impact?’ The International Aid Transparency Initiative offers the potential to provide a bridge between different systems and users, unlocking data from individual databases and reports, and enabling standardisation and flexibility. Ultimately, the question is not how to build the most elegant system to track volumes of finance, but how to use transparency to enhance and demonstrate the effectiveness of international collaboration in creating both environmental and economic benefits. We hope this paper provides a useful basis to bring together those working on different areas of this question to explore synergies and gaps and to work together towards this common aim. Read 'Towards Climate Finance Transparency'.

Logging monitors support transparency initiative

aidinfo — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 08:50:48 +0000

This week we have a guest blog from Resource Extraction Monitoring (REM), who have just published their first set of data on their current projects to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). REM specialise in independent monitoring of law enforcement and natural resource extraction. They have offices in Congo Brazzaville and DRC and work in the field to identify and investigate illegal activity. Here they explain why publishing to IATI is important to them as an organisation and detail the type of REM data you can now find in the IATI registry. We started with publishing the data on our first fisheries-based independent monitoring project: “Assessing and Developing the Role of Independent Monitoring by Civil Society to Support Good Governance in the Fisheries Sector in Sri Lanka”, which is a requirement of our funding by the UK Department for International Funding/Civil Society Challenge Fund. Transparency is particularly important to REM given that we are a monitoring and reporting organisation ourselves and promote transparency within the government partners we work with. Given this we have also published data on our other two current independent monitoring and capacity building projects based in the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and will continue to publish data on all our projects as they develop. Our current set of data includes descriptions of the projects, as well as their duration, their budget and expenditure so far. The financial summaries of each project will be updated after every financial report submitted to our funders, which will ensure that the data we publish is accurate, presenting a reliable picture of the cost of our work. At the moment, REM publishes regular reports on the results of our project activities on our website, which can be easily accessed through our project pages: In the future, we are planning to add more project information to the registry and/or our website, such as logframes and other planning documents. Our partner organisation, Forests Monitor, who leads our joint project in the Congo Basin, will also be publishing their data to the registry, which means that you, the public, will have an even more accurate view of our activities.

AidView – we need your help!

Alex Beech — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:07:07 +0000

We’ve recently launched our new aid data platform – AidView – in beta. Aidview allows you to easily access detailed and timely aid data published through the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), via a series of interactive visualisations. Available through iPads, Andriods and all modern web browsers, AidView enables you to have the information you need at your fingertips, when you most need it. All data on AidView has been published directly by donors via the IATI Registry. You can browse for data by sector, funder or geographical location of aid. Once you’ve found the data you’re looking for, you can match it up against other files and then save your selection to come back to whenever you want. We are confident that AidView is a useful tool for aid-data users, but we know that the system can be improved. We’d like your help to show us what these improvements might look like, and so we’re conducting some user-testing to feed into the final round of AidView developments. The first stage takes the form of a short user-test, which includes 10 questions and should take no longer than 10 minutes to complete. It has been designed to test the functionality and usability of AidView. The second stage asks for your feedback on the live version of the website via email or phone, whichever you prefer. If you are happy to help us please follow the link below to take part in the online test first, then follow links at the end of the test to view the live AidView website, where you can complete the second stage of the test. At this point you will be asked to download a word document listing some further questions about the live site. To help shape the future of AidView click the link below and take our test. Thank you! http://participate.usabilla.com/cf20731cc1e518189658806232c780482aa01ddc If you have any more thoughts or comments we’d love to hear from you, just get in touch. We’ll be posting the outcomes of the test here in a few weeks, see you then.

Energy and focus: where transparency and international development have merged in the 21st Century

aidinfo — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 16:45:09 +0000

It's time for the second segment in our three-part guest blog series from the author David Shaman. We will run the last blog in this series at the same time next week. You can read the first blog that we published last week here. David is the author of “The World Bank Unveiled: Inside the Revolutionary Struggle for Transparency“, an insider’s account of how the world’s largest international financial institution makes decisions. David was the communications manager of the Bank’s Development Economics Research Group on the Environment from 1993 to 2000, where he co-authored “Greening Industry: New Roles for Communities, Markets, and Governments”, a major Bank policy report on industrial pollution in the developing world. He also developed and managed the New Ideas in Pollution Regulation (NIPR) website, which was ranked as the Bank’s best website in 2000. He has also served as a legislative aide to two members of Congress and as a press secretary to a member of the New York City Council. In 1994, after lending missteps that negatively impacted the environment and indigenous cultures in key developing countries, the World Bank genuflected to an outcry from civil society activists for greater scrutiny by creating a Public Information Center in its Washington headquarters. This step was taken five years after the Bank’s adoption of its first public information disclosure policy. It would be another five years before the Bank opened similar centers in its satellite offices around the world. These new facilities allowed interested citizens to access selected Bank documents and provided them with a more educated perspective on what the agency was doing in their home country. Things are moving a bit faster these days. Transparency means something different for different actors. What follows then are several visions of transparency that are currently being pursued by development activists. These crusades are often pursued concurrently by the same actors rather than as competitions between them. The following list should not be viewed as comprehensive, but simply as important recent developments or debates now unfolding. Perhaps the longest standing activity among transparency advocates has been to reduce corruption in poor countries. Corruption devalues the potential impact of development assistance to eliminate poverty and promote growth, but prior to Bank President James Wolfensohn’s 1996 pledge that anti-corruption would garner closer attention during his term the issue had generated little urgency among development officials. Few doubted corruption impacted development, but for institutions such as the Bank where careers were made by funneling monies through the lending pipeline, the issue was unofficially considered taboo. Into this black hole entered numerous civil society groups such as Transparency International that have sought to examine, codify and expose the impact of corruption. Over the intervening two decades, attention has been paid to transparency and reform of procurement processes, corporate sustainability practices, fair and free elections, whistleblower protection and capacity building of public institutions and civil society stakeholders in poor countries. Development banks have implemented internal anti-corruption units and poured resources into making their procurement processes more transparent. Participants suggest there has been progress, but also acknowledge the problem remains immense. We should also acknowledge there is ample evidence to suggest corruption affects all societies to some extent, so it would be naïve to think corruption is a problem plaguing only poor countries. Piggybacking on the Freedom of Information Act, civil society actors have pressured international financial institutions (IFIs) over the past two decades for greater access to their information products as a means of monitoring their activities. As noted earlier, institutions such as the Bank responded by opening up document centers. Nevertheless, the global economic crisis, the growth of global Internet access and the emergence of social media tools has provided the impetus for important progress over the last few years. In 2009, when the G-20 agreed to invest $1.1 trillion into the IMF, Bank and regional development banks, significant pressure was raised by poor countries that these institutions needed internal reform and needed to share power more equitably between industrialized and developing nations. Thereafter, the international financial institutions acknowledged a need to be more responsive to their stakeholders. In 2010, the Bank revised its Access to Information Disclosure policy to assume all its information is publicly available unless it is specifically exempted. The new policy also provides an appeals process for stakeholders who are denied information. The revised policy reverses the institution’s previous approach of assuming information was not available unless specifically listed. Observers acknowledge this represents an important step by the Bank, but they also believe further improvements can be made to the new policy. Following the information disclosure policy revision, the Bank launched an Open Data Initiative that provides the public with free access to its vast database of development indicators. And, more recently, the institution has made its audited financial statements and its Sanction Board decisions on contractor-corruption cases available for public scrutiny. In an area where the Bank once moved slowly, it has made important progress. Other development banks are taking similar steps to review and revise their disclosure policies. This is an important point. External observers and stakeholders have long recognized that the World Bank acts as a catalyst for other IFIs. Once the Bank acts, these players tend to follow, so where critics can pressure this key agency to move, the results will be felt liberally throughout the IFI community. On another front, for the last decade, development officials have been convening high-level deliberations on how to improve aid effectiveness. One thread has caught fire: The need to make aid flows transparent. In 2008, principals attending a ministerial-level forum on aid effectiveness in Ghana launched the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). IATI provides a standard for aid providers to publish their aid data to, in order to show how aid monies are spent. The standard was designed to counter the issue of donors, recipients and civil society stakeholders having little information about aid flows. This lack of information led donors to duplicate one another’s efforts by spending too much in some areas while neglecting others. Aid recipients did not have a clear understanding of what they received as this lack of knowledge impacted their ability to plan and apply the aid more effectively. Nor did taxpayers and citizens know what their governments were donating or receiving or how to measure accountability for aid monies spent. Civil society organizations, including aidinfo.org, have pushed strongly to demonstrate how development effectiveness is improved by increasing the transparency of aid flows. Today, these actors are scoring important successes in getting development banks and donor governments, including the United States as of late 2011, to formally adopt IATI as a platform for making their aid flows known. IATI is still in the early stages and has shown much progress to date, with over 75% of all ODA now being covered by IATI signatories. However, there are still many donors yet to sign up to the initiatives and so much work remains to be done. Finally, as many development activists are aware, there has been an informal gentlemen’s agreement between the United States and European powers that harkens back to the formation of the Bretton Woods institutions: The U.S. government selects presidents for the World Bank and the Europeans select managing directors for the IMF. Starting with the process that anointed Paul Wolfowitz as Bank president in 2005, activists have questioned whether the ongoing quid pro quo arrangement is legitimate. The global economic crisis expedited tensions as poor countries pressured richer counterparts for increasing their representation and voting power on both financial bodies. The behind-closed-doors results of subsequent selections of Robert Zoellick, a U.S. national, to the Bank in 2007 and Christine Legarde, a French national, to the Fund in 2011 continued to escalate calls that future elections be open, transparent and merit-based. A key criticism from numerous civil society organizations and academics is that the current process is unrepresentative because final selections are not necessarily supported by the majority of poor countries. Critics also argue qualified candidates from poor countries are being denied posts that directly influence developing economies. Zoellick recently announced he will not seek a second-term when his current term concludes this June, and this puts the U.S. government in an interesting position. The U.S. has stated it supports an open and merit-based process, but key domestic political players will seek to insure the next president is an American. Expect the debate on transparency of the selection process for the next World Bank president to go into warp-speed this spring. These are exciting developments. They augur a new era and a new sensibility of what transparency means and why it is worthwhile. Just the debates themselves suggest that actors on all sides, including those traditionally resistant to greater openness and accountability, recognized these principles can improve development effectiveness and improve the legitimacy of implementing agencies. But there is a gap in the story, and one I suggest that even transparency’s most ardent proponents have not fully recognized as imperative. In my final note, I will seek to breach this divide.

Supporting transparency; country pilots

Alex Beech — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:57:26 +0000

Now that the high profile Busan High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness and all the buzz that surrounded it is over, you’d be forgiven for thinking that things had quietened down a bit here since, but you’d be wrong. For several months now, members of the aidinfo team have been working with the International Aid Transparency Initiative* (IATI) to test how IATI will work in developing countries through a series of country pilots. The first stage of these pilots is now underway and we’ll be updating you on their progress here. In 2011 several donors began publishing their aid information in line with the IATI standard. Working in-country, we are now testing how IATI data can improve the management and accountability of aid at national level. What’s the need? Those seeking aid information in partner countries have many different needs, but there is also a lot of overlap in what they want to learn from aid data. Highest on this list is the need for timely and forward-looking data, followed by the need for information not just on where aid has been allocated, but on how it’s going to be spent. Where are we working? In three countries, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Colombia, we are working with the government to see how IATI can improve and support the following processes for gathering aid data and information:

Through automatic data exchange into government’s own aid information management systems.
Through alignment of aid information with budgets and budget planning frameworks.
Through information sharing between new and emerging donors in the south, known as South-South Cooperation (SSC).

Our work in DRC Each pilot will work with their host governments in different ways and our activities are driven by the needs outlined by stakeholders in each country. In the DRC, where aid accounts for around 50% of the national budget, the government is monitoring aid flows into the country through three different ministries, and they face difficulties in that a lot of the information they gather is inconsistent and incomplete. Their aim is that all aid information should eventually flow through their aid information management system, to allow for consistent and centralised access to aid data that can be incorporated into their public financial management systems. The work we are doing in DRC through the IATI pilot tests how the data that donors provide in line with IATI can be used to complement and improve the existing and planned systems for aid management. We are doing this through:

Testing the viability of an automatic exchange of data from donors publishing IATI-compliant information and the DRC’s own aid information management system.
Testing how well aid data fits into the national budget.

Colombia Colombia differs vastly from DRC in terms of its aid income, with aid making up just 0.4% of their national budget. They are keen to establish where aid money goes in the country and the impact that it has on the communities that receive it. There is a strong commitment from both the Colombian government and from Colombian CSOs to monitor and publish details on aid so that they are accessible by the public. They do this through their aid information management system, which is publically accessible and user-friendly, and also through a CSO-managed database that combines data collected from the government system and directly from donors. Whilst Colombia’s system is more comprehensive and useful than many countries’ systems for collecting and collating aid data, they still face issues in this area. Firstly, while they collect a broad range of information, there are still gaps in the data which mean they cannot get a full picture of what is really being delivered to them, or for what purpose. Secondly, the nature of collecting data is inefficient, resource intensive and time-consuming. The IATI pilot in Colombia is working to establish whether collecting IATI-compliant data automatically through the government’s aid information management system can improve the quality and content of aid information gathered. Colombia is also a provider and a recipient of aid with other new and emerging donors in the south (known as South South Cooperation – SSC). Data on SSC provided by Colombia to its partners is already collected. However, work still needs to be done in order to quantify and qualify SSC information in the region. This pilot aims to understand the feasibility of collecting SSC data in the Colombian aid information management system and other information reporting systems in a format compliant with the IATI standard. The aim of this part of the pilot, aside from the ambition to capture SSC data in this way, is to understand how reporting SSC data might be different from reporting data from traditional donors. Rwanda In Rwanda, where 20% of the national budget comes from aid, the government experiences several problems in the collection of data. Namely, that the data received is inconsistent, unreliable and untimely as well as being incomplete. As a result, the government is unable to include aid figures in their budget plans or aid project plans, and so they can’t plan their national budgets or aid programmes effectively. The IATI pilot in Rwanda seeks to address these issues by offering the Rwandan government data that is automatically exchanged between their aid information management system and donor’s reporting systems. The focus is to ensure that quality data can be published regularly and fed into existing aid information management systems and processes, to improve the budgeting and planning process. Published in line with the IATI standard, this will mean both up to date and forward-looking data that can be aligned with budgetary plans. Data will also be more comprehensive, comparable and of better quality. An initial pilot study in 2010 hosted by the Rwandan government looked at the viability of implementing the IATI standard with the government’s aid information management system. The 2012 pilot, now underway, is building on this work to establish whether data generated from IATI is timelier, of improved quality and if it makes capturing and publishing data more efficient. It will also allow us to understand whether it is possible to take data published in the IATI format (including forward looking financial information) and better incorporate it into their integrated financial management system to make the government’s planning more effective. Isabel and Simon from the aidinfo team have travelled out to Rwanda this week to scope the pilot with our partners in Synergy iNternational Systems and the Rwandan Ministry of Economic Planning and Finance; we’ll have more on their progress here when they get back, so watch this space... *IATI is a multi-stakeholder initiative that works to make aid information more transparent, accessible and comparable. Through consultation with partner countries who receive aid, it has developed a standard to which donors and aid providers can publish their aid information. Designed with the intention of benefitting partner country stakeholders, the long-term benefits of publishing to a standard are that aid providers, donors and recipient country governments are more accountable, service delivery is improved and the effectiveness of aid increases. If you are new to IATI and would like to learn more you can visit their website or download this overview leaflet, supporting transparency.

Busan: A good outcome on transparency

Alex Beech — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:20:45 +0000

There’s plenty to celebrate here at aidinfo as HLF4 ends in Busan today. Transparency has been the issue of the day, and the subject on everyone’s lips – for example, in his speech to today’s plenary, Danish Minister for Development Cooperation Christian Friis Bach emphasised the importance of access to information, noting its power to change societies should not be underestimated. For us, the highlight of the week as been the flurry of interest from new donors in signing up to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), with Canadian CIDA, the Inter-American Development Bank, the US, CDC and UNCDF all joining IATI during this week’s Forum. Transparency was also one of the most hotly contested issues during protracted negotiations on the Busan Outcome Document. The language included in the final text, released today as the Busan Partnership for Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, inevitably represents a compromise, and is, in some respects, weaker than earlier drafts. Despite this, there is much to welcome: Transparency (and accountability) has been accepted as one of a number of shared principles that form the foundation of effective development cooperation (para 11d); Progress in making aid more transparent is acknowledged (para 15); And the crucial paragraph on transparency (23) includes a commitment to: c) Implement a common, open standard for electronic publication of timely, comprehensive and forward-looking information on resources provided through development co-operation, taking into account the statistical reporting of the OECDCDAC and the complementary efforts of the International Aid Transparency Initiative and others. This standard must meet the information needs of developing countries and non-state actors, consistent with national requirements. We will agree on this standard and publish our respective schedules to implement it by December 2012, with the aim of implementing it fully by December 2015. As a result of this week’s announcements, IATI signatories already account for 75% of ODA, and we believe that the text above provides a solid foundation for further progress in the coming months. The priorities now are for donors who have not yet joined IATI to do so, for those who have signed IATI to implement it, and for increased use of IATI data to create a virtuous circle, providing much-needed feedback from those who benefit from aid to those who provide it in order to maximise the impact of aid on poverty reduction. We will post further reflections on the outcome of HLF4 when our team return from Busan next week.