Stories, ideas, and updates from DGers around the world

Later this month, we’ll be attending the International Open Data Conference (IODC) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Made possible by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, DG is pleased to the financial holder of travel grants that are supporting a selected group of women to join us at IODC. In doing so, we’ve partnered with the Open Heroines network, an online group of women in open government, civic tech, and open data that is driving the facilitation of each grant award.

Coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the Accra Agenda for Action, we have conducted an AMP Retrospective on the DG blog. As our final Retrospective post, we are pleased to announce that DG has opened the source code of the Aid Management Platform (AMP). The now-public AMP source code is licensed under the GPLv3 open source license, which allows users to use and edit the software freely. 

“The Future is Open” is this year’s IODC theme, with the conference focusing on innovative solutions and opportunities for collaboration to inspire real progress in the years ahead. Critical to this progress is ensuring that data accurately reflects all citizens and their diversity of experiences, needs, barriers, and aspirations. But we know that open data continues to struggle to capture this for an entire half of the population: women.

DG recently participated in Elimika Wikiendi, an open online space for Kiswahili speakers to discuss issues including health, research, development, and technology in Tanzania and East Africa. The platform educates, raises awareness, and prompts online dialogue using the hashtag #ElimikaWikiendi.

We know that Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) aims to support accountability and learning, in order to drive better outcomes. Through the Results Data Initiative (RDI), we’ve approached M&E with a critical eye – how can we better allocate M&E funding, and what results are we really striving for?

In May 2005, the Government of Ethiopia launched the inaugural Aid Management Platform (AMP). Since then, a community of over 25 partner governments has seen each technical change and enhancement come to fruition, playing a crucial role in shaping each program iteration. Today, we’re providing an overview of AMP’s technical evolution, outlining challenges, opportunities, and lessons learned from building a large-scale, needs-driven product for our partners.

Through experience and learning gathered throughout our years of technical implementations, we know well that the ecosystems surrounding tools such as the Aid Management Platform (AMP) are much more critical to tool success than technology itself. In order to create a healthy environment for tools to thrive, several steps – and a consistent effort – are required.

DG is pleased to announce that Kim Yi Dionne, Assistant Professor of Political Science at UC Riverside, has joined our Board of Directors. “We are thrilled to have Kim join our board, as a creative and influential thought leader who embodies the values we strive for at DG. Kim’s approach of working with communities to understand their needs, amplifying underrepresented voices, and challenging stale thinking will push us to continue to grow and learn as an organization.“ states Josh Powell, DG’s Deputy Chief Executive Officer.

September 4th, 2018 marks the 10-year anniversary of the adoption the Accra Agenda for Action, promoting the strengthening of partnerships through ownership, inclusive partnership, and delivering results. In advance of this decade long milestone, DG is taking a moment of opportunity to reflect on our own experience – nearly 15 years of implementing the Aid Management Program (AMP) in over 25 countries. As we announced on the heels of our AMP Good Practices Workshop, this blog is the first in a series of posts on the evolution of AMP through 2018.

What does data-driven agricultural development in Nepal and Cambodia have in common? To answer this question, Development Gateway and partner Athena Infonomics are implementing the Accelerating Data-Driven Agriculture Development in Cambodia and Nepal Activity – funded by USAID and led by FHI360 through the mSTAR program – to support Feed the Future stakeholders in both countries improve their data interoperability and sharing practices.