Marrying new global players with the international aid transparency initiative: the future of aid data governance

Development aid forms an important link between rich countries, poor countries and poor people. But there have been serious concerns raised by aid critiques about the quality and accuracy of the global aid data.This paper explores the relationship between established players and new global players as they both grapple with rival definitions of aid quality. The authors argue that the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) standard should have the potential of ‘coordination and cooperation’ between the diverse sets of the Development Assitance Committee (DAC) as well as non DAC donors because of its ability to create homogeneity among these far apart actors. However IATI can only be seen as be implemented’ or ‘practised’ when the practice of all the signatories is changed start reporting their aid flows according to IATI standards.