As the well-known proverb says: ‘If you want to go fast go alone if you want to go far go together’. Publish What You Fund put this into practice recently when we opened our Aid Transparency Index methodology to public consultation with the view that together we can better reach our shared goals. The result has been an updated methodology for the 2024 Index. Below we will detail these methodology changes and the steps of the consultation.

For more than 10 years Publish What You Fund’s Index has been tracking transparency across 50 of the worlds’ major aid agencies. Over time we have seen these agencies improve their transparency policies and data quality in order to climb the Index rankings. Whilst we have travelled far in the last 10 years, with input from our key stakeholders we have this year reflected on new ways in which the Index methodology can be improved and updated. The 2023 consultation happened in three stages:

1. A stakeholder survey held in February 2023.

To launch the consultation, Publish What You Fund ran an open survey which received almost 70 responses from twenty organisations leaving detailed comments on individual indicators, the Index scoring and methodology approaches.

2. Internal discussion at Publish What You Fund

Internally we held regular twice-weekly team meetings along with five additional internal workshops to deep-dive into specific areas raised in the comments.

3. External methodology review workshops.

In March 2023 we hosted three virtual workshops which were attended by 64 people spread across three days. In these workshops we shared initial methodology change proposals and gathered further feedback.

On the 15^th of June 2023 we shared the detailed outcomes of the methodology review with all respondents and these changes will be implemented for the 2024 and future Indexes.

Methodology review changes

For the 2024 Index four indicators have been updated alongside an update to the scoring approach. These changes are summarised below. Further details can be found here and in the technical paper linked to below.

• New scoring approach: adding time lag

We have added a measure of how out of date an organisation’s data is to the existing measure of publication frequency. This measure is used to calculate all of an organisation’s indicators that are scored for IATI data.

• Networked data indicator: transactions

The networked data indicator checks for the publication of data about the organisations participating in an activity, either as funders, managers or implementers. Publishing this information helps to link data published by different organisations in aid delivery chains and networks.

We have added an additional test to the indicator that will check whether a receiver organisation name or reference is reported for each activity transaction.

• Planned dates: new exclusion

This updated test will exclude equity, hybrid and interest finance types from tests for planned end dates. The nature of these funding arrangements means they do not have a planned end date.

• Country strategy / MoU: new exclusion

The country strategy / MoU indicator looks for a strategy document for all countries and regions where the organisation is working in the year of assessment. This indicator will be updated to allow some exclusions for locations where a country strategy is not relevant.

Allowed exclusions:

• • When funding is diverted to a country for administrative purposes only
  • Where a country falls into the bottom 10% of recipient countries by volume of aid channelled by the assessed organisation
  • When investments to a specific country are part of a co-financing venture only
  • If the country is not being targeted directly (i.e. funds are channelled through multilateral funding or regional funding)
  • Allowed exclusions for country funding for immediate humanitarian disaster response where there is no development focus

• Sub-national location: renamed “Location”

The test for the presence of a sub-national location for each activity will filter out global, regional and national focused activities using the scope element, where possible. This is in order to direct the subnational location test to those activities that have an identifiable subnational location and exclude activities that do not have a specific location.

Working in consultation with our stakeholders to update the Aid Transparency Index ensures that the methodology remains relevant for the future. These changes reflect the adapting needs of data users who want to better track aid recipients down the delivery chain as well as ensuring that the Index responds to the publishing practices of aid and development organisations. It also more fairly assesses the overall quality of data. An updated version of the Aid Transparency Index Technical Paper, which contains the full methodology for the Index, can be found with track changes here.

The final selection of organisations to be assessed in the 2024 Aid Transparency Index will be announced in the coming weeks.