ABC
DEF
GHI
JKL
MNO
PQRS
TUV
WXYZ
GHI
JKL
MNO
PQRS
TUV
WXYZ
MNO
PQRS
TUV
WXYZ
TUV
WXYZ
AA
German Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt)
ABC
Brazilian Cooperation Agency (Agencia Brasileira de Cooperacao)
Accessible
The information is publicly available and easily obtainable in machine-readable formats via a central location or registry. It is provided free of charge under an open licence.
AECID
Spanish Agency for International Development
(Agencia Espanola de Cooperacion Internacional para el Desarrollo)
AFD
French Agency for Development (Agence Francaise de Developpement)
AfDB
African Development Bank
AsDB
Asian Development Bank
ATI
Aid Transparency Index
AusAID
Australian Agency for International Development
Bilateral institution
Bilateral institutions, such as USAID, operate on a government to government basis to implement their aid programmes.
BMF
German Ministry of Finance (Bundesministerium der Finanzen)
BMZ
German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development
(Bundesministerium fur wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung)
BPA
Busan Partnership Agreement
CIDA
Canadian International Development Agency
Comparable
Information is disaggregated and detailed to allow different users to access, use and compare it with other international data sets in many ways. At present, the only standard that allows this for aid flows is IATI.
Comprehensive
Information is detailed and complete, both in terms of breadth (all the different types of foreign assistance – development, humanitarian, post conflict, security, etc.) and depth (detailed enough for others to be able plan on the basis of that information).
CRS
Creditor Reporting System (of the OECD DAC)
CSO
Civil society organisation
CSV
Comma separated values
Current
For the purposes of the 2013 Index, “current” is defined as published within the 12 months immediately prior to the data collection period (1 May–31 July 2013), so information published on 1 May 2012 or later and that relates to that date or later is accepted as current.
DAC
Development Assistance Committee (of the OECD)
Data quality
How useful the data is for different users. To be considered high quality, the data needs to be comprehensive, timely, accessible and comparable.
DFI
Development Finance Institution
DFID
Department for International Development (UK government)
DG DEVCO
Directorate General Development and Cooperation – EuropeAid (European Commission)
DOD
Department of Defense (U.S. government)
EBRD
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
EC
European Commission
ECHO
Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Department (European Commission)
EDRIS
European Disaster Response Information System
EEAS
European External Action Service (European Commission)
EIB
European Investment Bank
EU
European Union
FCO
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (UK government)
FOI(A)
Freedom of Information (Act)
FPI
Foreign Policy Instruments Service (European Commission)
FSS
Forward Spending Survey (of the DAC)
FTS
Financial Tracking Service (of UN OCHA)
FY
Financial Year
G8
Group of Eight
GAVI
Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization
GIZ
German Agency for International Cooperation (Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit)
GPEDC
Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation
GTZ
German Agency for Technical Cooperation (Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit)
HLF-4
Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness
HLP
High Level Panel (United Nations)
HTML
HyperText Markup Language
IADB
Inter-American Development Bank
IATI
The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) aims to make information about aid spending easier to find, use and compare. It is a voluntary, multi-stakeholder initiative that seeks to improve the transparency of aid in order to increase its effectiveness in tackling poverty.
IATI standard
The IATI standard is a technical publishing framework. It uses an XML format, a machine-readable “mark-up” language that allows programmes to extract data and present it in a comparable and accessible way.
IDA
International Development Association (World Bank)
IFAD
International Fund for Agricultural Development (United Nations)
IFC
International Finance Corporation (World Bank)
IFI
International Financial Institution
ILO
International Labour Organization
IMF
International Monetary Fund
Interoperability
Interoperability is the extent to which systems or standards can exchange data, and interpret and present that shared data to produce useful results, as defined by the end users of the different systems or standards. The design goals of XML emphasize simplicity, generality and usability over the Internet.
JICA
Japan International Cooperation Agency
KOICA
Korea International Cooperation Agency
Machine-readable
Information that is presented in a structured way (not free text) that can be read automatically by a computer. Formats such as XML or spreadsheets (Excel, CSV) are machine-readable formats. Traditional word processed documents, HTML and PDF files are easily read by humans but are difficult for machines to interpret.
MAE
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (le Ministère des Affaires étrangères) – French government
MCC
Millennium Challenge Corporation
MFA
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
MIGA
Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (World Bank)
MINEFI
Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry (le Ministère de l’Économie et des Finances) – French government
MOD
Ministry of Defence (UK government)
MOFCOM
Ministry of Commerce (China government)
MoU
Memorandum of Understanding
Multilateral
Multilateral institutions, such as the World Bank and UNICEF, pool aid from one or more sources for disbursal to different recipients.
NGO
Non-governmental organisation
NZAID
New Zealand Aid Programme
OAP
Open Aid Partnership
OCHA
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (United Nations)
OECD
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Official Development Assistance (ODA)
Official Development Assistance (ODA) refers to flows to countries and to multilateral institutions which are provided by official agencies to promote the economic development and welfare of developing countries as its main objective. They are concessional in character and convey a grant element of at least 25 per cent (see full definition on OECD DAC website).
Official Development Finance (ODF)
Official Development Finance (ODF) refers to flows to recipient countries, including bilateral ODA, grants, concessional and non-concessional loans by multilateral financial institutions, and Other Official Flows (OOF) for development purposes (see full definition on OECD DAC website).
OGP
Open Government Partnership
OMB
Office of Management and Budget (Executive Office of the U.S. President)
Open license
The legal licence under which information is made available is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute the information — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and/or share-alike.
Open source
Open source refers to a programme in which the source code is available to the general public for use and/or modification from its original design free of charge.
OTA
Office of Technical Assistance (U.S. Treasury)
Other Official Flows
Other Official Flows (OOF) are transactions by the official sector with countries which do not meet the conditions for eligibility as ODA, either because they are not primarily aimed at development, or because they have a grant element of less than 25 per cent (see full definition on OECD DAC website).
Portable Document Format
PEPFAR
President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief
RTI
Right to Information
SDC
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
Sida
Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency
Timely
Information is current and provided frequently (at least quarterly and preferably monthly), so it can be mapped by different actors against any budget cycle.
TR-AID
Transparent Aid (aid database of the European Commission)
Traceability
Capturing the full ‘supply chain’ of aid, tracking the granting, re-granting and subcontracting of aid through to its final delivery to the intended beneficiary.
U.S.
United States of America
UK
United Kingdom
UN
United Nations
UNAIDS
United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS
UNDP
United Nations Development Programme
UNESCO
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UNFPA
United Nations Population Fund
UNICEF
United Nations Children’s Fund
UNOPS
United Nations Office for Project Services
URL
Uniform Resource Locator
USAID
United States Agency for International Development
USD
United States Dollar
WHO
World Health Organization (United Nations)
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a computer language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is readable by both humans and machines.