Where’s the development data on gender equality?

We’ve been looking into the need, availability and transparency of gender data in international development. You can see what we’ve found so far in our International Women’s Day blog.

New consultant opportunity: Python Developer

Can you help us deliver the next Aid Transparency Index? We are seeking proposals for a Python developer to provide technical support in the maintenance and operation of our Aid Transparency Tracker (our bespoke data collection and verification tool). If you are a skilled developer, have an interest in open data and are available for approximately 2.5 days per week, please get in touch!

Groundhog Day for US foreign affairs budget

The Trump Administration has again proposed major cuts to spending on foreign assistance in its FY 2020 budget. The Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) has released a statement expressing its alarm at the proposed 24% cuts, saying, “MFAN yet again disapproves of the drastic and unreasonable cuts to the resourcing of our development and diplomacy efforts.”

In a recent blog, Sally Paxton looked at the expected cuts and the lessons that could be drawn from our in-depth research into last year’s proposed cuts. We used open data to investigate the potential impacts of proposed drastic funding reductions for Cambodia, Nicaragua, Liberia and Senegal.

Reading…

And here’s a quick roundup of what we’ve been reading this week…

The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) has launched a data use survey to help it understand how IATI can effectively meet the needs of both users and publishers of development and humanitarian data on resources and results. It provides an opportunity to share your experience and feed into IATI’s strategic planning process.

The Overseas Development Institute is exploring whether the known and tracked resources for crisis response are only a sliver of a much larger and more significant pool of resources. Its new study looks at the refugee response in Uganda and the demand for financing data in a context where national and international actors are working towards shared goals and working across the ‘humanitarian–development nexus’. The study aims to understand how resource data could improve crisis response

The UN has produced a note looking into how countries are performing on institutional aspects of sustainable development goal 16: access to information, transparency, participation and accountability. It notes that while laws on access to information exist in many countries, not all have been implemented effectively – requests for information are often denied. It also indicates that the proactive publication of government data on government websites has increased; more budget information seems to be available at present than a decade ago, but there is a wide range of variations in disclosure practices across countries and regions.

A recent news story has looked into calls for greater localisation and transparency of aid in the Rohingya refugee response.

The Centre for Law and Democracy has been working with the Information Commissions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab provinces in Pakistan as well as other local stakeholders, to develop a tool for assessing the quality of implementation of right to information (RTI) laws.

The Center for Global Development (CGD) has released a new report on the importance of commercial transparency in public contracts. CGD’s Working Group on Commercial Transparency has developed a set of principles regarding commercial transparency, including deciding in what limited cases it is justifiable to exclude information from transparency and what the process should be.

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