Aid Transparency Assessment Karin Christiansen Paris, 25 October 2010

Aims & Objectives We know that aid is not always delivering the maximum impact possible Aid transparency is fundamental to delivering on donors’ aspirations and the promise of aid Essential to AAA specific aid transparency commitments as well as Paris Dec and HLF4 Our attempt to undertake a comparative stock take of the current levels of aid transparency

The Publish What You Fund Aid Transparency Principles Information on aid should be published proactively Information on aid should be comprehensive, timely, accessible and comparable Everyone can request and receive information on aid processes The right of access to information about aid should be promoted

Approach & Methodology Aim to assess levels of publication for the full range of information types in terms of their comprehensiveness, timeliness and comparability But methodology was driven by lack of primary data available Peer review committee established to advise on approach and methodology

Methodology 30 donors – because they were in the datasets 7 indicators in 3 categories 8 data sources (from 2006 to 2010) 3 categories given equal weighting

Indicators & data sources

Findings Finding 1: There is a lack of comparable and primary data Finding 2: There is wide variation in levels of donor transparency, across different types of donors Finding 3: There are significant weaknesses across indicators

Finding 1: There is a lack of comparable and primary data

Finding 2: There is wide variation in levels of donor transparency, across different types of donors

Overall Score

Finding 3: Significant weaknesses across indicators

Performance across the three categories Table shows donor performance across all three categories. Average score is shown at the top.

Conclusions Conclusion 1: The lack of primary data means that it is not currently possible to assess donor aid transparency in the degree of detail desirable Conclusion 2: Even so, we know enough to be confident that there is room for improvement across all indicators assessed

Recommendations Recommendation 1: Donors have demonstrated they can make information available, so they should Recommendation 2: Transform more information into better information through a common standard – mappable, searchable, useable Recommendation 3: Ensure common standard delivers for everyone – recipient systems esp. budgets, donors internal systems, HLF 4

Future aid transparency assessments Future assessments would ideally cover greater range of aid agencies (e.g. all donor govts incl. ‘emerging’ donors, humanitarian agencies, INGOs, private companies, contractors) Disaggregate donor performance country by country, programme by programme – variation inside agencies Cover range of info types from aid policies/ procedures; aid strategies; aid flows; terms of aid; procurement; assessments of aid & aid effectiveness; integrity procedures; public participation; to access to info mechanism BUT need your help and suggestions on way forward

Feedback & Questions Other data sources? Approaches to next year’s assessment? Possible partners? Our contacts: Rachel.Rank@PublishWhatYouFund.org Karin.Christiansen@PublishWhatYouFund.org