Publish What You Fund has developed an Aid Transparency Assessment. This is the first global assessment for aid transparency and we plan to produce more in the future.

We compare the transparency of 30 major donors using eight data sources across seven weighted indicators that fall into three categories – high level commitment to transparency; transparency to recipient government; and transparency to civil society.

The assessment is available to download on the Publish What You Fund website here. You can also experiment with the weightings and see how this affects the overall score.

Our first major finding is that there is a lack of comparable and primary data available. This meant we couldn’t do the type of bottom up assessment we wanted to and highlights the essential nature of what donors are doing in building an international standard. The indicators we developed from the limited data available provide an interesting insight into the comparisons of current levels of donor transparency.

We found that there is a wide variation in levels of donor aid transparency and that donors showed significant weaknesses across the seven indicators. The highest performing donor (the World Bank) achieved more than double the transparency score (85.4%) of the lowest (Japan with 41.9%).

We are planning to carry on with this work on an annual basis. Our hope is that in future there will be with more comprehensive, comparable and timely data for us to draw on. We would very much appreciate feedback, suggestions and thoughts on how to take this work forward.