New UK Government data release
The UK Government announced it will release new data about public services – including where British aid money is spent – on the official data website data.gov.uk.
Commenting on the Department for International Development (DfID) aid data, Publish What You Fund’s David Hall-Matthews, said:
“DfID continues to take a lead on aid transparency – not only in Whitehall, but globally as well. We are very interested to see the detail of this new release, particularly around corporate transparency. We hope other departments that deliver aspects of aid, such as FCO and MoD, will also follow suit.
“We believe that in order for aid to truly be transparent, information on aid must be comprehensive, timely and comparable, and published to the standard of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).”
The plans for releasing statistics from every government department over the next year will be published alongside the open data white paper, which is expected to commit the government in future to a general presumption in favour of publishing public sector data, and take further steps toward extending the policy to all organisations which deliver public services, including private contractors.