Welcome to our regular roundup of news from the world of aid and development transparency.

Vacancies for Chair and Trustees

Do you have a background in global development, humanitarian aid, open data or development finance and an interest in supporting the future of Publish What You Fund?

Publish What You Fund is currently looking for three new Trustees, including a new Chair. We are seeking individuals with knowledge of strategy, finance, and transparency to take on these voluntary roles and oversee a viable and resilient organisation. We are also seeking a Chair of the Trustees, who should be confident in governance process and procedure, have strong chairing skills, and act as a partner to the CEO.

Trustees should be willing to commit four days per year to prepare and participate in quarterly board meetings (in London and via conference call) and the Chair should be available for ten days per year. The Chair and Trustee positions are not renumerated; pre-agreed expenses are paid. Please get in touch if you would like to discuss the opportunity.

Closing date for applications is 26 June 2023. Find out more here.

Other news

Here’s a quick roundup of other news and publications we’ve been reading over the last few weeks:

This article in The Economist looks at the localisation efforts of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). It refers to our recent paper examining USAID’s measurement of local funding, and why the metrics matter.

This blog looks at how to use International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) budget data to analyse future aid and development spending in the year ahead. It looks at how budget data can assist planning and coordination, and how the Country Development Finance Data tool can help.

A new website has been launched to campaign for reform in the way Official Development Assistance (ODA) is measured. ODA Reform, set up by Stephen Cutts, hosts articles, policy and technical papers that make the case for establishing statistically robust counting methodologies under politically independent governance arrangements.

The Africa Network of Information Commissioners, a platform that brings together members of access to information oversight bodies, has launched Transparent Times – covering the latest developments, initiatives, and best practices related to promoting access to information and transparency in Africa.

A blog by the Global Partnership for Social Accountability and the Transparency and Accountability Initiative, published on the World Bank blog, argues that to optimise the benefit of climate investments, transparency, equity, and inclusion must be at the heart of climate finance decision-making. The authors make the case for green accountability – an approach recognising that effectively addressing the climate crisis requires harnessing the insights and agency of those most affected by climate impacts. They say citizens and civil society must be at the centre of climate finance to direct funding, implement solutions, and hold decision-makers accountable for effective and equitable climate action.

An Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) study has found that in the last decade, nondemocratic regimes have received more development assistance than democratic countries. In 2019, 79 percent of ODA went to autocracies, up from 64 percent in 2010, mainly due to the increased number of countries classified as autocratic.  In this article, Marc De Tollenaere discusses how donors struggle with autocratisation despite a rhetorical commitment to democracy.

This DevPolicy blog looks at the recent announcement not to cut aid (or to significantly increase it) in Australia. But some additional funding has been announced for aid effectiveness and transparency.

The CSO Aid Observatorio is a CSO-initiated and maintained database of development projects funded through bilateral ODA or international finance institutions (IFIs). CSO reports offer on ground narratives and evidence-based analysis of development projects. The database now has details of 61 projects, and a new synthesis report provides an overview of the projects, their funding, aims and implementation as well as recommendations for improvement.

The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs has launched a portal to provide access to its development cooperation results data. The portal also gives an overview of spending on each area, and can be viewed by country or theme.