On Thursday 7th October the World Bank launched the ‘Apps for Development’ competition. The competition aims to bring together the best ideas from tech developers and development practitioners to create innovative apps using World Bank data.
The World Bank yesterday, 22nd September, made another important step toward improved transparency by making their data more accessible and user friendly. Having opened their data to the public in April 2010, data.worldbank.org has been extensively evaluated, and as a result now benefits from many improvements and added features.
The World Bank’s Vice President for South Asia, Isabel Guerrero, yesterday stressed the importance of transparency in Pakistan aid efforts to reassure donors that flood aid will not be subject to corruption.
Researchers from the World Bank, Development Gateway and AidData have just geocoded the Bank’s African and Latin American aid projects. That is, they have added subnational geographical information to plot exactly where aid activities are taking place in each country. Watch this video by AidData which brilliantly explains what geocoding means and why it is so important.
Eurodad released a new report “Conditionality in World Bank crisis-lending to Ghana” on July 29th which finds that conditions for receiving loans are increasingly “being pushed through the side door” instead of being outlined in the loan agreements, keeping Low Income Countries under the influence of the Bank.
The World Bank Institute’s Access to Information Program has published three papers, covering issues including proactive transparency, access to information, and citizen participation:
