Stories, ideas, and updates from DGers around the world

This Story from the Field comes from Anna Lauridsen of Development Gateway International. She tells us about her participation in the Open Data for Development Camp held in Amsterdam in May: The Open Data for Development Camp was put together by Open for Change, a network based in the Netherlands committed to transparency, collaboration and impact in development, on request by the Dutch Foreign Ministry. I was there to present the geocoding work that Development Gateway and the AidData team have done. At the heart…

The Open Data for Development Camp (ODDC), hosted by Open for Change in Amsterdam from May 12-13, proved to be a fantastic forum for discussion of practical issues in institutionalizing open data practices. Participants generally agreed that open development data should be a core component of a paradigm shift towards increased transparency, accountability, and public participation in development practice.

Last week, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and AidData launched an interactive map showing the precise locations of the AfDB’s ongoing operations in Cameroon, Morocco, and Tanzania.

PRESS RELEASE Lisbon and Washington, DC—June 9, 2011— At its Annual Meetings, being held from June 9-10 in Lisbon, the African Development Bank Group unveiled an interactive map showing the precise locations of its ongoing operations in Cameroon, Morocco, and Tanzania (http://184.73.156.57/afdbprojects/). These countries represent a subset of the 2,040 activities financed across the continent since 2009. The map is the result of a partnership between the African Development Bank (AfDB) and AidData (www.aiddata.org) to geocode AfDB projects, which range from building primary schools, health…

PRESS RELEASE

Development Gateway has worked with Mozambique since 2008 to update and expand its aid information management system, known as ODAmoz. ODAmoz was created in 2005 as a way to coordinate and harmonize donor activities in Mozambique. The system allows each of Mozambique’s donor focal points to enter data directly into the ODAmoz system, significantly reducing transaction costs for the government in terms of collecting aid information from donors. Once a project is entered into ODAmoz, the information is published on the ODAmoz site, so that…

'On April 14, the World Bank announced winners of the Apps for Development Contest, which challenged software developers around the world to leverage World Bank open data in creating innovative applications that address development issues. The contest drew 107 entries from 36 countries across 6 continents – more than a third of these entries were designed by African developers. The three winners of the contest are as follows:'

PRESS RELEASE Washington, DC – Development Gateway, an international non-profit that makes information on development aid more transparent and accessible, signed a memorandum of understanding with Esri, a leading provider of Geographic Information System (GIS) technology. The two organizations plan to continue joint efforts to leverage geospatial technology to support international development objectives. "There is a huge amount of information on international aid available to the public online. But if you really want to understand what donors are doing, seeing the locations of aid activities on a…

AidData and the Climate Change and African Political Stability Program (CCAPS) at the University of Texas are working with Malawi's Ministry of Finance to geocode aid activity information. Geocoding, through which information is pinpointed to a precise geographic locality, provides a visual aid for development planning and coordination, allowing governments and their donor partners to better assess current aid distribution and plan future projects.

By early May, users of the AidData database will be able to run queries on aid activities by donor, sector, and country, as before—but with a new twist. The results will be exportable in the new international aid reporting standard recently finalized by the International Aid Transparency Initiative, which aims to make aid information more open and accessible.