The United States’ largest spending aid agency, USAID, has published its plan for increasing openness and transparency.

Although delayed by several months after the June 1^st deadline, USAID’s Open Government Plan is an improvement on its previous ambitions.

The report references USAID’s ongoing commitment to publish aid information to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), and its goal of increased engagement, saying, “USAID will investigate the costs of fulfilling additional IATI reporting requirements and publish a cost management plan which elaborates the findings.”

Under President Obama’s 2009 Open Government Directive, all U.S. executive departments and  agencies are required to publish biennial plans outlining their actions to implement the principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration.

We hope this important commitment will result in a robust plan of action, developed in consultation with the NGO community, to achieve full implementation of IATI by 2015. We further hope the State Department’s plan, still pending, is released promptly.

Click here to read the full report.