Publish What You Fund welcomes the Public Online Information Act which has been introduced to the House of Representatives in the U.S. by Representative Israel of New York 2nd District. This act requires executive branch agencies to publish all information online in a timely manner and accessible format.

Advocated by the Sunlight Foundation, ‘Public = Online’ is the idea behind this act. The internet makes it possible to access government information from home, and with all the data online in a machine-readable format it can be further used to analyse and evaluate trends and performance in spending.   This is an exciting and promising step for the transparency agenda. From an aid perspective this resource would prove invaluable in tracking and evaluating the many U.S. agencies allocating and spending foreign assistance money and contracts.