an Eldis Resource
International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI)
Improving aid transparency: a new initiative
Authors:
Publisher:
Development Initiatives, 2009
The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) was launched at the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra in September 2008 to accelerate the reduction of poverty by improving aid through greater transparency. It was believed that the publication of comprehensive, timely and detailed information about aid, in a form that is easy to access, will contribute to more effective aid, limit opportunities for corruption, and promote greater mutual accountability and ownership by developing countries.
The authors of this scoping paper present a number of implications for donors:
- Donors have many competing claims on scarce resources, and many statistics and reporting units are vastly under resourced
- Much of the core project information required is already captured within donors’ central management information/financial systems
- For all donors, there will still be a significant amount of information that is required by users, but not currently captured in a systematic way
- It is likely that to fully comply with IATI, many donors will need to consider an investment in improving their reporting systems.
Recommendations include:
- Further analysis should be undertaken to better understand the costs and benefits to donors of complying with the potential IATI standards, and to understand what support they may require
- To develop the standard, IATI should draw up a comprehensive list of the categories of information to be covered
- Agreed mechanisms should be established for updating the common standards over time and arbitrating disputes. As part of the code of conduct, donors should agree to participate and cooperate in these shared processes
- Consider developing a work stream to address accessibility issues and additional capacity-building needs – particularly for stakeholders in partner countries. Additionally, new and existing intermediaries should be encouraged to use, re-purpose and find innovative way of presenting the available information.
The authors conclude that detailed consultations with partner countries, civil society organisations and other key stakeholders should be done to determine their priorities in terms of aid information.
