International AidTransparency Initiative (IATI)

Overview Romilly Greenhill Aid Transparency Leader, DFID

October 2010

Why improve aid transparency?• Fundamental to all 5 Paris Principles:

– Ownership: need good information to plan and budget, and involve citizens

– Alignment: better information critical for getting aid on budget and aligning behind country plans

– Harmonisation: donors need good information about each others’ plans to harmonise

– Mutual accountability: information critical for accountability between donors and partners, and to citizens

– Results: need information on inputs to be able to effectively monitor outputs and outcomes

Why improve aid transparency?• Strong demand from partners and CSOs

– Partner country consultations have expressed a strong demand for better information on how, where, when, what and in which sectors aid is spent, future aid flows, and other core areas

– Enhanced transparency is a consistent and strong demand from northern and southern civil society organisations

• Enable citizens and parliamentarians to track aid flows and ensure aid is put to most effective use – Paris Declaration evaluation 2008 noted the ‘continuing serious

difficulties involved in securing and providing timely, transparent and comprehensive information on aid flows that enable partner countries to fully report on budgets to their legislature and citizens. This basic contribution by donors to mutual accountability is widely found to be missing or inadequate, even in relatively strong systems’

• Enables donor country citizens to better understand how aid is being used

Why a new initiative? • Raise political profile and support to the

transparency agenda • Opportunity to bring together diverse stakeholders

towards shared goal • Build on, and add value to, existing mechanisms for

sharing information – in particular the DAC-CRS• Focus on meeting the needs of stakeholders in

partner countries • Help to meet the Accra transparency commitments

in the most coherent and consistent ways• Ensure information made accessible to a wide range

of stakeholders

What does IATI aim to achieve? (1)

• Meet information needs of developing country AIMS and budgets, with local classifications

• Develop common definitions and reporting processes, and avoid parallel reporting

• Provide easily relevant and accessible information for governments, parliamentarians, civil society, the media and citizens,

• Provide accurate, high quality and meaningful information (not statistics)

• Provide information in ways which are easy to understand, reconcile, compare, and read alongside other information sources

What does IATI aim to achieve? (2)

• Include information from non-DAC donors, multilaterals, foundations and NGOs

• Information published is legally open, with as few barriers to access and reuse as possible

• Reduce duplicate reporting by donor agencies and minimise additional costs

• Be electronically accessible in an open format • Access to information about aid which is more

timely, more detailed, more forward looking and more comprehensive

HQ

Countryteams

DAC CRS

AIMS

FTS

Treasury & Parliament

Line MinistriesSectoralworking groups

Journalists & Researchers

AIDA, PLAID, TRAID, Donor

Atlas, etc

Embassywebsite

Donorwebsite

Donors already publish to many systems and services

BUT

• Significant burden

•Results in inconsistencies

Reporting now – a view from donor perspective

www.aidtransparency.net

DAC CRS

AIMS

FTS

Donor budgets

and accounts

Line Ministries

Sectoralworking groups

Journalists & Researchers

AIDA, PLAID, TRAID, Donor

Atlas, etc

30 Embassy or

Delegation websites

DonorwebsiteDonor

websiteDonorwebsite45 Donor

websites45 Donorwebsites

Systems are producer rather than user oriented

Information can be:

•hard to find•inconsistent•scattered across multiple sites•unavailable

Reporting now – a view from user perspective

www.aidtransparency.net

The worst of all possible worlds – requiring a collective solution

Publish once, use often

Countries would not have to change their classifications

www.aidtransparency.net

Benefits to donors • Publish information once, rather than responding to multiple,

ad-hoc data requests, including under FoI legislation • Improved understanding of citizens and parliamentarians in

donor countries – helps make the case for aid • Demonstrate to constituencies that are tackling corruption

and ensuring that aid is well spent• Better understanding of other donor activities at country level • In some cases, improve information sharing between HQ and

country levels within donor agencies • Publication can help to ensure better quality information• Better information can facilitate higher quality research and

evaluation • Stronger focus on results – help to understand what works

and what doesn’t • Potential for greater automation of reporting over time

Benefits to partner country governments

• More up to date information on current and future donor activities to inform AIMS and strengthen planning and budgeting

• Reduced transaction costs through automation of data exchange • Improve coverage and quality of information available • Help to support AIMS by:

– Making it easier for partners to collect and use aid information from donors – Ensuring information is public – many AIMS are not– Creating political pressure to ensure that donors report fully to AIMS– Ensuring more qualitative information is published – Promoting accessibility to stakeholders– Common definitions – to adapt locally where needed

• Meeting information needs of line ministries, not just finance and planning

• Strengthen mutual accountability through improved information on donor performance

Benefits to CSOs and parliamentarians

• Access to much more detailed and up-to-date information on donor spending

• More qualitative information available • Improved ability to track use of resources and hold

donors and governments accountable • Better able to participate in decision making

processes through improved information • More and better information available on specific

areas through intermediaries • More accessible information

• IATI will support and add value to existing systems like the DAC and AIMS, not undermine or duplicate them;

• Develop a four-part standard for publishing aid information;

• Partner countries will have access to more up-to-date information on current and future aid allocations;

• Parliamentarians and CSOs will benefit from increased access to more detailed and timely data to demand accountability;

• Donors will publish their aid information once, rather than respond to many requests;

• Information intermediaries will be able to collect data automatically and offer a wider range of tailor-made services.

What IATI will do

www.aidtransparency.net

• Duplicate the work of the CRS – which is designed for a specific purpose

• Create a parallel set of definitions and classifications - this work will only take place where no existing classifications exist

• Design a new database – one database cannot meet all needs

• Push a one-size-fits-all approach onto donors or partner countries – – Donors use existing systems and convert to IATI format– information published will be tailored to country

circumstances • Strengthen partner country transparency – this is

important work, but is taking place elsewhere

What IATI will NOT do

www.aidtransparency.net

IATI governance & management

• Secretariat: DFID, UNDP, Development Initiatives for Poverty Research (DIPR)

• Funding: Netherlands, Ireland, Finland, Switzerland, UK. Australia, Germany, Norway

• Multi-stakeholder Steering Committee• Multi-stakeholder Technical Advisory Group (TAG) • Full IATI membership: donor signatories and partners

who have endorsed• New ‘IATI observer’ category Partner country

consultations led by UNDP• Civil society consultations led by Reality of Aid

Next steps

• Phase 1 standards agreed by IATI signatories on 7th July 2010

• Phase 2 and 3 standards: aiming for agreement by December 2010

• January 2011: ‘Early implementers’ will start publishing in line with IATI standards

• November 2011: Aim for all signatories to implement phase 1 standards

Publish once, use often

www.aidtransparency.net