Publish What You Fund has developed an Aid Transparency Assessment. This is the first global assessment for aid transparency and the organisation plans to produce more in the future.

The assessment compares the transparency of 30 major donors using eight data sources across seven weighted indicators that fall into three categories – high level commitment to transparency; transparency to recipient government; and transparency to civil society.

“Aid transparency matters for many reasons– from improving governance and accountability and increasing the effectiveness of aid to lifting as many people out of poverty as possible. While some aid is helping address some of the most difficult problems in the most challenging places in the world, we also know that aid is not always delivering the maximum impact possible.

The understanding emerged that aid transparency is fundamental to delivering on donors’ aspirations and the promise of aid. The commitments donors made to improve their aid effectiveness in the 2005 Paris Declaration are important and welcome. The recognition that donors were struggling to deliver on those commitments1 resulted in a new focus on aid transparency in 2008 within the Accra Agenda for Action and with the launch of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).

The methodological approach taken is fundamentally driven by a lack of primary data availability.”

The Aid Transparency Assessment is available for download by clicking on the attachment below. You can also click here to experiment with the weighting and see how it affects the overall score.

The organisation would appreciate feedback, suggestions and thoughts on how to take this work forward.