Posts categorized Open Data

One of my favorite quotables from the Cartagena Data Festival came from Ricardo Fuentes-Nieva of Oxfam who said that maybe we need a data “reformation” instead of “revolution” – alluding to the Protestant Reformation, when the Bible was translated into the vernacular of the people...

On March 19-20, the IATI Secretariat convened a Regional Workshop on Development Data and Usage. This event included 14 country governments from across Africa, as well as a handful of Ghanaian and international civil society organizations and service providers.

Last week, we shared big-picture challenges and opportunities our team identified when evaluating IATI data for country-level integration. In this post, we will explain in more detail our data comparison and methodology used to analyze IATI and in-country data...

Parents, teachers, governments, and social welfare organizations all want to provide children with the best education possible. In most places, these groups work together to allocate resources, build schools and improve the quality of education. But education officials, organizations and families need information to guide these efforts. Sometimes even the most basic school information – like school location, fees, class size, or even building types – is completely unavailable, inaccessible, or out of date.

'Since the introduction of a US Open Data Policy in 2013, domestic agencies - particularly in the foreign assistance sector - have made great strides in opening up their financial, programmatic, and evaluation information. As recently highlighted by the Center for Global Development:'

This post continues coverage of breakout sessions held at the 7th Annual Aid Management program Good Practices Workshop in Kathmandu, Nepal.

This January, a newly elected U.S. Congress took the stage, bringing up the question of how it will shape U.S. foreign assistance discussions in 2015. The US Global Leadership Coalition’s Liz Schayer has argued that there is a consensus from both sides of the aisle that aid accountability and transparency will continue to be an emphasis moving forward.

Why do remittances matter?ODA has modestly increased over the past few decades; however, since the late 1990s officially recorded remittance flows have outpaced assistance – in 2013, by more than 300%. Remittances are sent by individuals, not governments, and often travel through money transfer companies such as Western Union and MoneyGram.

Development Gateway, through its partnership with AidData, recently concluded the first phase of USAID’s Higher Education Solutions Network-funded geocoding work in collaboration with the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ministry of Planning. Outcomes were well received by government officials and key development partners. However, everyone acknowledges this is only the first step towards enhancing GIS capacity throughout government agencies and the donor community.

Recently, we discussed the International Aid Transparency Initiative’s data publication and quality “tipping point”: per the IATI Secretariat, seven of the top ten development partners (DPs) in most countries are publishing IATI data.