Despite promising to improve transparency, including confirming Australia commitments to international transparency initiatives, the current Australian Government has failed to share enough data about their development activities.

The Aid Transparency Index (ATI), released today by Publish What You Fund, is the industry standard for assessing transparency among the top 68 aid-giving organisations, from countries including the U.S. and Germany, to influential organisations such as the World Bank and the Gates Foundation.

Although there has been a marginal improvement in Australia’s overall score, it has slipped in the ranking from 24^th to 25^th place on account of being overtaken by other organisations that publish more comprehensive information about their aid activities. It has made very little progress on publishing important information items including project-related documents, information on the location of its projects and results data. Furthermore, only a limited amount of project-level information that was previously available through the AusAID website can now be directly accessed via DFAT’s website.

Rachel Rank, Publish What You Fund, said:

“A lot of progress was made at the political level in the early days of aid transparency, including a promise to publish aid information to an internationally-agreed common standard by the end of 2015. But with a year to go until that deadline, progress has stalled. The ranking shows that no matter how many international promises are made, and no matter how many speeches there are around openness, a startling amount of organisations are still not publishing what they fund.”

Shobaz Kandola, Australian Country Director, Global Poverty Project, said:

“To end extreme poverty we need to both increase the volume of overseas aid and increase the transparency of where and how funds are being spent. We need to be assured that aid is being used to improve the lives of millions around the world who live in poverty.

“Australians wouldn’t take well to coming 25^th in a sports and neither should we accept it when it comes to aid transparency. We should be aim to be number one, to have the most transparent aid program in the world. While Australia’s overall score has gone up this year we have fallen in the rankings because others have done better.

“Upon taking office Foreign Minister Julie Bishop promised to improve transparency of the Australian aid program. This was at the heart of the new policy she announced earlier this year. In implementing her new aid policy Ms Bishop and her department should take into account the recommendations contained in today’s report.”

To see all the findings of the 2014 ATI, visit: http://ati.publishwhatyoufund.org/2014

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Contact:

Nicole Valentinuzzi T: +44 (0)7726 831 197 nicole@publishwhatyoufund.org

Shobaz Kandola T : +1 917 402 6224 shobaz.kandola@globalpovertyproject.com