Over the past few months Publish What You Fund along with some of its partners have been working on a series of blogs to explore Aid Transparency from different perspectives and for different uses. The series of blogs kicked off in March with a blog from Paul O’Brien from Oxfam America and concluded in May with a joint blog by George Ingram, Brookings, and Sally Paxton, Publish What You Fund. Each blog addressed different issues such as Why Transparency Matters to Good Data: the Foundation of Open Government.

While the aim of this blog series was to unlock the potential uses of aid information, the blogs also offered the opportunity for members of the community to get involved and share their own experience and concerns with accessing aid information. The transparency agenda includes a large number of actors, from NGOs to Foundations, Governments and Think Tanks. Below are the organizations and the authors that took part on this series:

27 March – Paul O’Brien Oxfam: ‘Why transparency matters’

2 April – Ben Leo, ONE: ‘From day one: transparency at the heart’

12 April – Rodney Bent, Sunlight Foundation: ‘Bring that lantern over here: why budget transparency matters’

18 April – George Ingram, Brookings: ‘Why Congress should care about the International Aid Transparency Initiative’

23 April – Tessie San Martin, Plan USA: ‘Glass houses…INGOs and walking the walk on IATI’ Also posted here

2 May – Sam Worthington: ‘It’s Time To Move From Rhetoric To Action On Aid Transparency’ 

16 May – Sheila Herring: ‘MCC & Open Data’

23 May – George Ingram, Brookings + Sally Paxton:  ‘Good Data- The Foundation of Open Government’

We are planning to continue our guest blogs. If you have any suggestions or would like to be featured on this blog series, get in touch! As we near the Open Government Partnership in October we will be looking at how other countries are using aid information, why it matters, what are the obstacles in getting access to aid information or how it makes a different when it is available. The U.S. and all other founding members of OGP will be expected to present new National Action Plans in October in London. We would love to hear from you on why aid transparency and access to high quality information is important.