Stories, ideas, and updates from DGers around the world

I am Owen Scott and recently I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to attend the Engineers Without Borders Canada (EWB Canada) National Conference in Calgary. EWB Canada - no affiliation with EWB USA - is a progressive development organization focused on creating transformative change in African markets, public sectors, and civil society through supporting a continuously evolving portfolio of innovative ideas and ventures.

The 7th edition of the European Development Days (EDDs) took place in Brussels, Belgium, in October 2012. Organised by the European Commission, the EDDs is the main forum on international affairs and development cooperation in Europe. The forum serves as a veritable melting pot of development advocates, decision-makers and practitioners, bringing together some 6,000 people and 1,500 organisations annually to learn from each other’s best practices, discuss and network.

Since 2010, Development Gateway has cooperated with the Government of Nepal on a high-functioning Aid Management Platform. The Nepal AMP is headquartered in the Ministry of Finance but its information is shared widely with the National Planning Commission, all of Nepal’s line ministries, and the Nepalese media.

Computer hardware would be useless without data and programs to process it. But to run programs, the computer must know how to do basic tasks like booting up, reading user input or loading programs. This is performed by the operating system, e.g. Windows, Linux or Mac OS. So when we speak of a computer, we mean the combination of hardware, operating system to bring it to life, and software to solve our tasks.

The Aid Management Program was first introduced in Tanzania in 2007. Working with the Tanzanian Ministry of Finance, the software platform was installed in 2008 and government officers and development partners trained to effectively use system. The platform now hosts over 1800 projects and holds historical aid records from 2001 to date.

We are proud to announce that the Nepal Aid Management Program (AMP) has just received another kudos.According to a Pilot Study on Improving Aid Transparency, prepared by NGO Federation of Nepal, the Aid Management Program may be the best way to improve the availability of aid information to NGOs in Nepal:

This month, dgMarket reached a new milestone – we now have over half a million users who can track almost $1 trillion in government procurements annually!rnrndgMarket is an online marketplace for government tenders, providing access to tender notices, bidding documents, and other procurement information. It also provides open information on some 1.6 million contract awards, in support of the Open Contracting movement.

The open data and transparency revolution underway in international development is as much about culture change as it is about data, technology, and standards. I am Nancy Choi, Director of Operations, and recently I have been in the midst of these changes.

Seven years ago, Development Gateway designed and piloted the Aid Management Program with local and international partners and the Ethiopian Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MOFED). Today, AMP is embedded in Ethiopia’s aid effectiveness action plan and MOFED has declared AMP the official government system for capturing and reporting on aid activities.

Developing countries lose 10 times more money due to corruption than they receive in official aid. As contracts from the world’s governments amount to $9.5 trillion annually, public procurement is one of the major areas affected by corruption.