The U.S. Government is committed to making information on foreign assistance programs
more transparent, accessible, and compatible with international standards. In November
2011, the U.S. Government became a signatory to the
International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) and has begun publishing data in accordance
with the IATI standard. The U.S. Government is also taking active steps to meet
the commitments endorsed at the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan,
Korea in December 2011. The Busan Outcome Document (Paragraph 23) states that adherents
“…will work to improve the availability and public accessibility of information
on development co‐operation and other development resources. . .” and “. . . implement
a common, open standard for electronic publication of timely, comprehensive and
forward‐looking information on resources provided through development co-operation.
. .”
The U.S. schedule for implementing these Busan transparency commitments can be accessed
here. The Foreign Assistance
Dashboard will be the primary tool for the U.S. Government to deliver on its promise
of making aid data more transparent.
The Foreign Assistance Dashboard will help the U.S. pursue the following objectives:
- Make foreign aid more useful for development. Greater aid transparency
accomplishes this objective by assisting recipient governments to better manage
their aid flows and by empowering citizens to hold governments accountable for how
assistance is used.
- Increase the efficacy of our foreign assistance. With a clearer
understanding of what we are doing, where, and to what effect, the U.S. will be
better positioned to maximize the impact of our resources and investments.
- Increase international accountability. Greater access to information
about assistance will help developing country governments and international civil
society to hold donors accountable for the quantity and quality of aid flows.
The Foreign Assistance Dashboard is guided by the following core principles:
- A presumption in favor of openness.
- An initial focus on the publication of existing data online
in an open format that can be retrieved, downloaded, indexed, and searched by
commonly used web search applications. An open format is one that is platform independent
and made available to the public without restrictions that would impede the re-use
of that information. Published data will be registered on Data.gov.
- Detail, Timeliness, and Quality: Data will be published
with the level of detail, quality, and speed needed to enhance government development
planning and empower citizens to hold their government accountable. This will include
detail on where, when, on what, and to what effect (i.e. results) assistance is
planned, committed, planned for disbursement, and spent. Multi-year forward projections
of this data will be included to the extent permitted by law and regulation.
- Prioritization: Agencies will prioritize high-value data,
information that can be used to increase agency accountability and responsiveness,
further the core mission of foreign assistance, or respond to need and demand as
identified through public consultation.
- Comprehensiveness & Comparability: The U.S. Government
will encourage maximum coverage and comparability across agencies, donors, countries,
and types of flows and should publish data in a common standard to ultimately enable
global comparisons across data sets.
- Accessibility: The U.S. Government will encourage entrepreneurs
and civil society organizations to visualize and package the data in ways that make
it easy for non-experts to understand and use. The U.S. Government will also develop
strategies for delivering the data in useful formats to partner governments.
- Institutionalization: The U.S. Government will institutionalize
a process that facilitates the collection and dissemination of data on foreign assistance
across agencies.
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