Stories, ideas, and updates from DGers around the world

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...

Earlier this year, we announced a new partnership between Development Gateway and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development to integrate IATI and Aid Management Platform (AMP) data in Burkina Faso, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Madagascar, and Senegal. Below is an update on outcomes to-date; our next post will describe in-depth the data methodology for this process.

On Wednesday, February 25th, 2015, AidData co-hosted a consultation event at the OpenGov Hub with U.S. Department of State's Foreign Assistance Resources office, the U.S.

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– like school location, fees, class size, or even building types – is completely unavailable, inaccessible, or out of date.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.

In part 1, we took stock of progress made and missing pieces to flesh fully the data revolution. With that in mind, what are some of the major challenges for the development community in launching a Geospatial Data Revolution?1) Matching data to Government needs

A recent ODI paper focused on what ‘localizing’ might be applied in the post-2015 agenda. With the exception of a few broad considerations, it depends on the local context. It’s an important phrase we’re all familiar with, but sometimes is left behind when we start talking about things like scalability. It also means involving local communities in feedback loops from the start.