(from the great AidInfo website)

“At aidinfo we conduct research and liaise with aid donors and recipients to build up a case for aid transparency. We want to show that improving and increasing the amount that donors report on their aid contributions can help communities to track aid spending. In turn, donors and governments will be more accountable for their aid spending. It is expected that in this way aid will reach more people on the ground, helping to contribute more in the fight against poverty.

This is all well and good, but it is difficult to prove. Svensson’s work, then, is of great importance to us here.

This Study by Reinikka and Svensson (2005) found that in 1995 only 20 percent of a primary education grant program to rural Uganda actually reached its intended target. This figure rose by a striking 60 percent in 2001 when information was published detailing where this money was going; a full 80 percent of funds reached their intended destination, greatly improving education services in the area.

Björkman and Svensson (2009) followed up on this study with a compelling randomised controlled trial testing the effects of transparency on health care in Uganda. The experiment randomly assigned community health clinics to receive published ‘report cards’ and NGO-organised public meetings on the quality of the clinics’ health care.

The results of this transparency ‘treatment’ rivalled the effects of the best health interventions involving expensive new medicines, equipment, and procedures. Waiting time for care decreased, absenteeism among doctors and nurses plummeted, clinics got cleaner, fewer drugs were stolen, 40-50 percent more children received dietary supplements and vaccines, health services got used more, and, powerfully, 33 percent fewer children died under the age of five. This amounted to 550 saved lives in a small area of Uganda encompassing merely 55,000 households.

This is strong evidence that access to information about services empowers citizens to get better services and saves lives.”

William Savedoff and Christina Droggitis, Centre for Global Development, Aug 2011. Available as pdf (2 pages)

Excerpt:

“One organization that has taken the need for impact evaluation seriously is the Millennium Challenge Corporation. The first of the MCC programs came to a close this fiscal year, and in the next year the impact evaluations associated with them will begin to be published.

Politicians’ responses to the new wave of evaluations will set a precedent, either one that values transparency and encourages aid agencies to be public about what they are learning or one that punishes transparency and encourages agencies to hide findings or simply cease commissioning evaluations.”

The 12th April 2011 Draft plan is now available in pdf and MS Word

Introduction

“AusAID is the Australian Government’s Agency for International Development, an executive agency within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade portfolio. Its primary role is the implementation and oversight of the Australian Government aid program. The aim of the program is to assist
developing countries reduce poverty and achieve sustainable development, in line with Australia’s national interest.

Reforms to the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act) have established the Information Publication Scheme (IPS). The purpose of the IPS is to give the Australian community access to information held by the Australian Government and enhance and promote Australia’s representative
democracy by increasing public participation in government processes and increasing scrutiny, discussion, comment and review of government activities and decisions.

AusAID is committed to greater transparency through the implementation of the Information Publication Scheme (IPS) and other initiatives that will introduced. As Australia’s ODA commitment has increased, public interest in the aid program has correspondingly increased and this will
continue. Implementation of the IPS will provide more information to Australians about AusAID’s activities and help increase public participation understanding and scrutiny of Australia’s aid program.

This draft plan has been prepared to assist AusAID implement the IPS, in accordance with section 8(1) of the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) 1982 and to give the Australian public the opportunity to comment and provide feedback on this plan.

As AusAID’s final plan is implemented it will be progressively updated in light of experience and feedback. The list of documents that is a core part of this plan will, in particular, be amended.”

The consultation: Visit this AusAid website to see how to participate and to read the views of others who have already contributed.

Blog posting by Owen Barder
February 22nd, 2011

“I’ve spent the last three years working on aid transparency. As I’m moving on to a very exciting new role (watch this space for more details) this seems a good time to reflect on what I’ve learned in the last three years.

This is a self-indulgently long essay about the importance of aid transparency, and the priorities for how it should be achieved. Busy readers can just read the 8-point summary below. For a very clear and concise introduction to the importance of aid transparency, this video by my (former) colleagues at aidinfo is very good.

I’m going to talk in a separate post about the exciting progress that has been made towards a new system of aid transparency, which I believe builds on many of these lessons, and on the next steps for the transparency movement more generally.

The 8-point summary

There is apparently a law that every document in development must have an “Executive Summary”. (Not just a “summary”, mind. It has to be for executives.) So here are what I think are the eight most important things I’ve learned in the last three years about transparency in general, and aid transparency in particular:

1. To make a difference, transparency has to be citizen-centred not donor-centred. A citizen-centred transparency mechanism would allow citizens of developing countries to combine and use information from many different donor agencies; and provide aid information compatible with the classifications of their own country budget.

2. Today’s ways of publishing information serve the needs of the powerful, not citizens. Existing mechanisms for publishing aid information were designed by the powerful for the powerful. Until the aidinfo team started 3 years ago, nobody had ever done a systematic study of the information needs of all stakeholders, including citizens, parliamentarians and civil society, let alone thought about how those needs could be met. That’s why current systems meet only the needs of donors, and powerful parts of governments.

3. People in developing countries want transparency of execution not just allocation. There are important differences between the information requirements of people in donor countries and people in developing countries. Current systems for aid transparency focus mainly on transparency of aid allocation, because that is what donor country stakeholders are largely interested in, and not enough on transparency of spending execution, which is of primary interest to people in developing countries.

4. Show, don’t tell. The citizens of donor nations are increasingly sceptical of annual reports and press releases. In aid as in other public services they want to be able to see for themselves the detail of how their money is being used and what difference it is making. They increasingly expect to be actively involved in decisions, and they are less willing to delegate the decisions entirely to experts. Donor agencies – whether government agencies, international organisations or NGOs – will have to adapt rapidly to become platforms for citizen engagement.

5. Transparency of aid execution will drive out waste, bureaucracy and corruption. There is, unfortunately, quite a bit of waste, bureaucracy and corruption in the aid system. There is good evidence that this kind of waste is rapidly reduced when the flow of money is made transparent. Corruption and waste prosper in dark places. Transparency of planned future aid spending will also help to increase spending efficiency and value for money.

6. Social accountability could be Development 3.0. The results agenda in aid agencies is currently too top down and pays too little attention to the power of bottom up information from the intended beneficiaries of aid. Increased accountability to citizens may be the key to unlocking better service delivery, improved governance and faster development.

7. The burden of proof should be on those who advocate secrecy. We have published a compelling business case for greater transparency, with all the uncertainties this kind of analysis entails. So where is the business case for secrecy, which would be far harder to quantify or defend? Why is the (inevitable) uncertainty in this kind of analysis allowed to count against the case for transparency, when the same uncertainty would deal a much greater blow against the case for secrecy?

8. Give citizens of developing countries the benefit of the doubt. Transparency is necessary but not sufficient for more effective aid. But the fact that transparency alone will not solve every problem should not be an excuse for aid agencies to shirk their responsibilities to be transparent. Nor should we be too attentive to vested interests in the aid industry telling us that transparency is not enough. Citizens of developing countries will be more innovative and effective than some people give them credit for when we give the information they need to hold the powerful to account.

That’s the summary. If any of that whets your appetite and you want the long version, read on.”

See Devil in the Details, Nature, Volume:470, Pages: 305–306 , 17 February 2011.

How many aid agencies could do the same, when their projects manage to deliver good results? Are there lessons to learned here?

Article text:

As analysis of huge data sets with computers becomes an integral tool of research, how should researchers document and report their use of software? This question was brought to the fore when the release of e-mails stolen from climate scientists at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, generated a media fuss in 2009, and has been widely discussed, including in this journal. The issue lies at the heart of scientific endeavour: how detailed an information trail should researchers leave so that others can reproduce their findings?

The question is perhaps most pressing in the field of genomics and sequence analysis. As biologists process larger and more complex data sets and publish only the results, some argue that the reporting of how those data were analysed is often insufficient.

Take a recent survey by comparative genomist Anton Nekrutenko at Pennsylvania State University in University Park and computer scientist James Taylor of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. The pair examined 14 sequencing papers published last year in Science, Nature and Nature Genetics, and found that the publications often lacked essential details needed to reproduce the analysis — the papers referenced merely bioinformatics software, for example, without noting the version used or the value of key parameters.

“Transparency is a laudable goal, but given the complexity of the analyses, is it realistic?”

The two researchers presented their findings at the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology meeting in Marco Island, Florida, on 2 February. Although their account has not been published, it does not seem to have surprised anyone in the field. Indeed, it builds on a 2009 paper in Nature Genetics that found similar omissions in published accounts of microarray experiments. (J. P A. Ioannidis et al. Nature Genet. 41, 149–155; 2009). In this case, findings from 10 of the 18 studies analysed could not be reproduced, probably because of missing information.

If genomics were as politicized as climate science, the authors of studies in which the information trail is missing would probably face catcalls, conspiracy charges and demands for greater transparency and openness. Instead, many in the field merely shrug their shoulders and insist that is how things are done. Bioinformatics is a fast-paced science in which software and standards for data analysis change rapidly and with them, the protocols and workflows of users.

Nature does not require authors to make code available, but we do expect a description detailed enough to allow others to write their own code to do a similar analysis.

Some in the field say that it should be enough to publish only the original data and final results, without providing detailed accounts of the steps in between. Others argue that it is pointless to document the version of the software used, as new incarnations of programs differ little. But that is not always the case. Edward McCabe, then at the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, was so perturbed when different versions of the same bioinformatics software gave wildly different results that he published a paper on it (N. K. Henderson-Maclennan et al. Mol. Genet. Metab. 101, 134–140; 2010). Reviewers resisted its publication, asking what was new about the findings, as it was already common knowledge that different software versions could dramatically affect analyses. There is a troubling undercurrent here: that the problem lies not with the lack of information, but rather with those who find the incomplete information a problem, such as researchers who are new to the field.

Transparency is a laudable goal, but given the complexity of the analyses, is it realistic? There are certainly examples of stellar documentation. The 1000 Genomes Project, for example, a project to sequence and analyse more than a thousand genomes, has carefully detailed its workflows, and makes both its data and its procedures available for the world to see. It is perhaps easier for members of that project — which is essentially repeating the same procedure more than a thousand times — to practise good experimental hygiene than it is for individual scientists, who have more flexible and varied research goals. Nevertheless, tools are coming online to simplify documentation of the complex analyses required for genome analysis. These include freely available programs such as Taverna (http://www.taverna.org.uk) and Nekrutenko’s more user-friendly Galaxy (http://main.g2.bx.psu.edu). Neither of these is perfect, but they illustrate the level of detail that could enrich published reports.

As genome sequencing spreads from the large, centralized sequencing centres that largely pioneered the technique into smaller labs and clinics, it is important that the community consider such solutions.

….A question posed to the Research Helpdesk of the Governance and Social Development Resource Centre

“Key findings: DFID appears to have gone the furthest among aid agencies in developing the concept of ‘value for money’ (VFM). It is the only agency that explicitly uses the terminology frequently in its policies and procedures and has a Value for Money department. DFID’s approach to VFM involves assessing whether level of results achieved represent good value for money against the costs incurred. Processes include the use of logframes, economic appraisals and portfolio reviews. Newer initiatives include the adoption of a business case model for project approval and the development of unit cost metrics in key sectors. Other donors, while not explicitly adopting ‘value for money’ terminology, aim to achieve VFM through rigorous economic analysis and results-based management.

The ‘value for money’ agenda has also been linked to efforts to improve accountability and transparency. This requires strengthening audit bodies, parliaments, media, civil societies and independent watchdogs such that they can hold government to account for spending. It also involves greater transparency, in particular publishing information on projects and allocation of funds.”

Full response: http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/HD712.pdf

(from Karin Christiansen,Publish What You Fund )

“I am proud to share with you Publish What You Fund’s Aid Transparency Assessment that we have been working on over the last year. This is the first global assessment of the transparency of 30 major donors across seven indicators from eight data sources. The indicators cover donors’ commitment to aid transparency, transparency to recipient governments, and transparency to civil society.

The assessment is available on the new Publish What You Fund website. Explore the data yourself and see how donors perform.

Our first major finding highlights the necessity of donors building an international standard. The lack of comparable data meant we could not do the type of bottom up assessment we wished. However, the indicators developed from the limited data available provide an interesting comparison of current levels of donor transparency. We are planning to carry on with this work on an annual basis.

We hope there will be with more comprehensive, comparable and timely data to draw on in the future and would very much appreciate feedback, suggestions and thoughts on how to take this work forward.

The Assessment will be presented at the OECD DAC workshop on transparent development co-operation today, at the International Anti-Corruption Conference in Bangkok in November and at workshops in Washington in December.”

Jörg Faust , German Development Institute D-I-E, 2010, APSA 2010 Annual Meeting Paper. Available as pdf

Abstract:
“Foreign aid is said to be more effective for development if it is allocated to relatively poor recipient countries’ with relatively sound political institutions. This allocation rule also meets the preferences of citizens in donor countries, who expect their government to spent aid on countries that are needy and institutionally prepared to use it well. Unfortunately, aid allocation in the past often has diverged from this rule because donor governments and other bureaucratic agents often pursue special interest politics. This paper studies the variance of aid allocation patterns across donor countries. It relates this variance of aid allocation patterns to different levels of political transparency within donor countries. Where political transparency is high, donor governments are more accountable and have less maneuvering space to diverge from technocratic expertise and citizen’s preferences. An empirical test, using data for the 1998-2008 period confirms this hypothesis. Donor countries with higher levels of political transparency allocate aid more according to recipient countries’ neediness and institutional performance”

on Devex, By Eliza Villarino on 06 September 2010

The U.K. Department for International Development has opened an online discussion to help it decide how to implement its aid transparency initiative.

The UKaid Transparency Guarantee forms part of the coalition government’s commitment to boost the transparency of DfID aid. As reported by Devex, U.K. Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell announced the guarantee, along with the intention to create an independent aid watchdog, in June.

DfID is urging civil society groups, think tanks and other organizations working on transparency to send an e-mail to aidtransparency@dfid.gov.uk if they wish to contribute to the discussion.”

PS – 19th October 2010: A summary of the online discussion is now available here as a pdf: 2010 Summary of Huddle Discussions on UKATG