Open data for aid and development
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The document discusses the increasing importance of open data for aid and development, highlighting both the improvements and shortcomings in data transparency among aid organizations. It reveals that while there has been progress in aid transparency, significant data quality issues persist, particularly in lower-income countries. Recommendations are provided for enhancing data quality, awareness, and tools to improve data accessibility and utility for stakeholders.
Open data for aid and development
- 1. Open data for aid and development Rupert Simons April 27, 2016
- 2. Source: World Development Report 2016 We’ve all heard of big data Cellphone subscriptions worldwide billion 0.7 7 2000 2015 Gigabytes of data produced every day billion 2.5 2000 2015 <0.1
- 3. But data is often poor or non-existent in countries where you need it most Managing the Ebola crisis • Where are the patients? • Where are the ambulances? • Have the health workers been paid? Source: Nature, FT Estimating the size of the economy • Did Nigeria’s GDP really double in two years? • ‘Middle income’ countries pay more to borrow from the World Bank, but less in the market 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 Nigeria GDP, USD per capita
- 4. Publish What You Fund reviewed the quality of data produced by major aid donors 10 25 65 Activity level data (28 indicators) Organisation level data (8 indicators) Commitment to transparency (3 indicators) We worked with people from 46agencies in 22 countries and 36 independent reviewers and CSOs 100 To assess 39 indicators of data on aid and development Maximum possible score Over a data collection period of 14 weeks
- 5. What we found: Aid is getting more transparent 4 7 105 8 8 16 16 16 16 15 726 22 5 2013 Index 2014 Index 2016 Index Very Poor Poor Fair Good Very Good Source: Aid Transparency Index 2013-16 Performance of agencies in the Index Total 67 68 46 Ten donors met the Busan commitment in full: • UNDP • U.S. – MCC • UNICEF • UK – DFID • The Global Fund • World Bank – IDA • IADB • AsDB • Sweden • AfDB
- 6. 300+ Nearly 400 organisations are now publishing to IATI Number of IATI publishers by type 2011-15 Source: IATI annual report 2015
- 7. The norm is gradually shifting from annual reporting to quarterly, monthly or real time Annual reporting • Companies House/ Charity Commission returns • OECD-DAC Credit Reporting Statistics (for official donors) • Annual report on website (usually in PDF) Regular updating • Monthly or quarterly publication • Machine-readable and web formats • Edit for confidentiality Real-time data sharing • Uploaded automatically • Daily decision-making • Limited editing
- 8. Some governments are using the data NGOs are using it too, for example: Source: IATI, Development Gateway IATI import system in use IATI import system under development IATI partner country
- 9. Most people outside government are not Source: d-portal.org, 2016 Aid Transparency Index Partly because it’s not easy to use Partly because they don’t know it’s there Partly because the data is of poor quality “Even stakeholders that regularly search for aid information, like civil society watchdog organizations and parliamentarians, were not aware of the available data sources.” USAID aid transparency pilot assessment, July 201513% of activities in Ghana had a location specified
- 10. Meanwhile, civic registration and administrative data lags far behind Source: Development Initiatives “Data Revolution in Africa” 82 45 33 29 22 13 9 40 29 13 18 9 9 15 38 58 60 78 Census Household survey Poverty census Agricultural census Birth statistics Death statistics Recent (last 10 years for census, last 3-5 years for survey) Out of date Unusable or unavailable Quality and availability of data in African countries, percentage of countries
- 11. Estimates for closing data gaps range widely, with $100-200 million per year as the median Source: Brookings; CGD; SDSN 17-66 Cost of building and maintaining statistical systems to monitor the Sustainable Development Goals USD million per year 100- 200 1,100 900- 1,000 >10,000 New money Existing aid Own resources Not specified
- 12. So what should we do about it? • A perspective from the INGO Accountability Charter • What do you think? • Publish What You Fund perspective • Data quality • Awareness • Tools
Editor's Notes
- #4: One of the key objectives of the aid transparency agenda is to provide aid information in a way that can be used by partner country governments, particularly so it can be included in their own budget cycle. Requires intelligent partnership between governments. Responsibilities lie on both donors and recipients – donors need to give their information in a timely and standardised fashion. Recipients need to make sure that their aid management processes are well linked to their actual budget processes. In 2007, this took eight months of manual data collection, and another six months to visualise aid flows and the domestic budget in Uganda. In time, IATI will allow us to do this at the click of a button. Some surprising results: only one half of non-budget support aid was being reported to the govt (and therefore reflected in its budget). Well over 50% of the health budget was coming from aid project funding. This should have informed aid programming discussions at sector working groups, but politically sensitive (and at the time, not open data).
- #5: This is a domestic process too. Takes international commitments to the domestic agenda.
- #7: Since organisations first started publishing in 2011, over 300 have published data to the IATI Standard. These include International NGOs, bilateral and multi-lateral donors, private sector, foundations and research organisations. NGOs make up a considerable number of publishers, in part due to IATI reporting being made a funding requirement by some donors. UK, Germany, U.S., WB, AFDB, Sweden, Netherlands, Australia, Canada to name a few. UK - Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs UK - Department for International Development (DFID) UK - Department for Work and Pensions UK - Department of Energy and Climate Change UK - Department of Health Government United Kingdom UK - Foreign & Commonwealth Office UK – Home Office This means that the standard can accommodate a number of users and publishers. Diversity of those publishing to IATI makes this achievable. What does it mean to publish to IATI. Not a hugely technical effort but rather extracting data from the source and putting into the common format.
- #8: This is a domestic process too. Takes international commitments to the domestic agenda.
- #10: One of the key objectives of the aid transparency agenda is to provide aid information in a way that can be used by partner country governments, particularly so it can be included in their own budget cycle. Requires intelligent partnership between governments. Responsibilities lie on both donors and recipients – donors need to give their information in a timely and standardised fashion. Recipients need to make sure that their aid management processes are well linked to their actual budget processes. In 2007, this took eight months of manual data collection, and another six months to visualise aid flows and the domestic budget in Uganda. In time, IATI will allow us to do this at the click of a button. Some surprising results: only one half of non-budget support aid was being reported to the govt (and therefore reflected in its budget). Well over 50% of the health budget was coming from aid project funding. This should have informed aid programming discussions at sector working groups, but politically sensitive (and at the time, not open data).
- #11: One of the key objectives of the aid transparency agenda is to provide aid information in a way that can be used by partner country governments, particularly so it can be included in their own budget cycle. Requires intelligent partnership between governments. Responsibilities lie on both donors and recipients – donors need to give their information in a timely and standardised fashion. Recipients need to make sure that their aid management processes are well linked to their actual budget processes. In 2007, this took eight months of manual data collection, and another six months to visualise aid flows and the domestic budget in Uganda. In time, IATI will allow us to do this at the click of a button. Some surprising results: only one half of non-budget support aid was being reported to the govt (and therefore reflected in its budget). Well over 50% of the health budget was coming from aid project funding. This should have informed aid programming discussions at sector working groups, but politically sensitive (and at the time, not open data).
- #12: One of the key objectives of the aid transparency agenda is to provide aid information in a way that can be used by partner country governments, particularly so it can be included in their own budget cycle. Requires intelligent partnership between governments. Responsibilities lie on both donors and recipients – donors need to give their information in a timely and standardised fashion. Recipients need to make sure that their aid management processes are well linked to their actual budget processes. In 2007, this took eight months of manual data collection, and another six months to visualise aid flows and the domestic budget in Uganda. In time, IATI will allow us to do this at the click of a button. Some surprising results: only one half of non-budget support aid was being reported to the govt (and therefore reflected in its budget). Well over 50% of the health budget was coming from aid project funding. This should have informed aid programming discussions at sector working groups, but politically sensitive (and at the time, not open data).
- #13: One of the key objectives of the aid transparency agenda is to provide aid information in a way that can be used by partner country governments, particularly so it can be included in their own budget cycle. Requires intelligent partnership between governments. Responsibilities lie on both donors and recipients – donors need to give their information in a timely and standardised fashion. Recipients need to make sure that their aid management processes are well linked to their actual budget processes. In 2007, this took eight months of manual data collection, and another six months to visualise aid flows and the domestic budget in Uganda. In time, IATI will allow us to do this at the click of a button. Some surprising results: only one half of non-budget support aid was being reported to the govt (and therefore reflected in its budget). Well over 50% of the health budget was coming from aid project funding. This should have informed aid programming discussions at sector working groups, but politically sensitive (and at the time, not open data).