Produced by aidinfo. aidinfo is an initiative to contribute to faster poverty reduction by making aid more
transparent.
This is a draft for consultation that summarises the evidence we have gathered so far. We welcome suggestions, additions, comments and corrections.
Executive Summary
1. Improved transparency of aid information would contribute to faster poverty reduction by
making aid more effective and accountable. Poverty reduction would be accelerated by:
- More responsive services, more accountable government and country ownership
- Improved performance of aid agencies
- Reduced scope for corruption
- Better linking of aid to results
- Improved quality of investment decisions
- Better macroeconomic management
- Reduced overhead costs in aid
- More trust and stronger partnership between donors and recipient countries
- More research and evaluation leading to improved lesson?learning
- Increased public support for aid in donor countries
2. Increased transparency of aid is a specific commitment in the 2005 Paris Declaration and of
the draft Accra Agenda for Action: it is also a necessary condition for making progress across all
five of the Paris principles of ownership, harmonisation, alignment, results and mutual accountability.
3. Greater transparency of aid information will have a significant impact when the information can be
accessed through a variety of means by people in developing countries as well as in donor countries,
in a form that is useful to them. This will enable them to use the information to make aid work
better for them.
4. We are conducting detailed surveys of users of information, in developing countries and in donor
countries, to find out what exactly they need to help them to make aid more effective. So far,
we have found that the main needs for more information are:
- more detail about how aid is being spent
- more up?to?date information (ideally, information in real?time);
- more timely and detailed information about anticipated future aid flows;
- a way to trace aid as it moves from one organisation to another, from funder to intended beneficiary;
- broader coverage including bilateral donors, multilateral organisations, foundations and NGOs;
- sufficient detail so that information can be organised according to local definitions;
- easier access to the information in formats which can be integrated into local systems.
5. We are also working with donors to find out what information they already have and can make
available. We have found that a surprising amount of information is already published, either online
in project ocuments or collected through multiple, parallel reporting systems. Unfortunately, because
of the way it is published, much of this information is out of date by the time it is available, and it
is difficult to access, compare and aggregate. Other information that is needed to make aid
more effective is already collected by donors for their internal purposes, but is not
currently published in the detail required
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