November 24, 2020

Friends of Publish What You Fund (Friends) submits comments in response to the public notice and comment period for the Draft Transparency and Draft DFC Board of Directors Public Engagement Policy. 

At the outset, the DFC made the commitment to set the gold standard on transparency among development finance institutions. Friends welcomes both the draft policy on transparency and the recognition of the broad benefits of wide stakeholder engagement. The policy commitments, particularly at the project level, warrant particular mention, as does the prioritization of stakeholder engagement for policy, strategy, and other DFC priorities. In addition to our broad support for these draft policies, Friends recommends that the DFC consider some additional specific changes, discussed in this document. 

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September 22, 2020

There are five U.S. agencies included in the 2020 Aid Transparency Index. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is in the “very good” category and ranks as the top bilateral agency globally. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) also significantly improves its score from the 2018 Index, landing near the top of the “good” category. For the first time, the U.S. State Department is ranked “good.” The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has had uneven performance in the index over the years, slips back into “fair,” and the Department of Defense falls even further back into the “poor” category.

September 22, 2020

The Aid Transparency Index is the only independent measure of aid transparency among the world’s major development agencies. It is the flagship publication of Publish What You Fund. Launched in June 2020, the Index highlights: 

• Significant improvement in aid donors’ overall transparency compared to 2018, with over half of the 47 assessed donors now ranked as ‘good’ or ‘very good’.

• Only a minority of donors are publishing project results with fewer still publishing project reviews and evaluations, limiting the ability of stakeholders to gauge the effectiveness and value of aid spending.

• The Index is driving behaviour towards greater transparency and openness among aid donors.

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February 22, 2019

This analysis will focus exclusively on the availability of US government documents related to foreign assistance. It is primarily based on our user-experience of exploring the data for the four chosen countries published by the Department of State (State), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). This report focuses primarily on documents and other web-based pages which provide information on what a project is about, what approach has been taken, and what it has achieved, including pre-project impact appraisals, annual or quarterly reports, and evaluations. 

October 30, 2018

Read this quick summary of Publish What You Fund and the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network's report on the consolidation of the United States Foreign Aid Dashboards.

October 30, 2018

A detailed analysis, published by the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) and Publish What You Fund, on the recommendations for the consolidation of the two US Foreign Assistance Dashboards. 

June 19, 2018

The Aid Transparency Index is the only independent measure of aid transparency among the world’s major development agencies. It tracks and encourages progress, while holding donors to account for commitments they have made to open up their information. In 2018, it assesses 45 agencies. It is researched and produced by Publish What You Fund.

June 19, 2018

This is the sixth year that Publish What You Fund has assessed the United States (U.S.) progress on aid transparency. Since the U.S. commitment to joining the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) in Busan in November 2011, the Aid Transparency Index has been tracking the quality of the publication of U.S. aid information by five U.S. agencies and one initiative.

October 21, 2016

Featuring data from surveys and in-depth interviews with 52 key stakeholders in the U.S. government and civil society, this report is an evaluation of aid transparency over the past decade. It recognizes the progress the U.S. has made, including political commitments from both the Bush and Obama administrations to aid transparency. However, aspects of implementation have proved to slow the pace, including the ‘whole of government’ approach, which held back leaders such as MCC from publishing their information initially. Furthermore, the dueling dashboards of USAID’s Foreign Aid Explorer and State’s ForeignAssistance.gov provided conflicting data given their different approaches to data publication.  

October 21, 2016

The Data Revolution and U.S. Global Development: Transparency and Accountability in U.S. Foreign Assistance provides clear recommendations to the next Administration, calling for them to:

• Implement the U.S. commitment to publish humanitarian aid data

• Invest in gender equality through publication of robust gender data

• Improve U.S. aid transparency for stronger U.S. global development

October 21, 2016

The document contains a list of interview respondents, interview questions, and the survey questionnaire for the report, How Can Data Revolutionize Development?

April 13, 2016

Publish What You Fund's Aid Transparency Index is an internationally recognised measure of the state of aid transparency in the world’s leading aid organizations. The 2016 Index was another opportunity to work to improve aid transparency and meet the December 2015 Busan deadline. The list of organisations included in the 2016 Index has been revised to concentrate on fewer, larger donors, as well as those that have been instrumental to advancing the course of aid transparency.

April 13, 2016

This is the fifth year that Publish What You Fund has assessed the United States (U.S.) progress on aid transparency. Since the U.S. commitment to joining the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) in Busan in November 2011, the Aid Transparency Index has been tracking the quality of the publication of U.S. aid information by five U.S. agencies and one initiative.

July 28, 2015

When the U.S. signed up to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) in 2011, it committed to make U.S. aid transparent by December 2015. The implementation of those aid transparency commitments four years later remains mixed.  The 2015 Reviews assessed a smaller number of key donors, including the U.S., in the run up to the Busan deadline and were released in mid-2015.