12.
Service for Foreign Policy Instruments
Good
OVERVIEW
The EC’s Service for Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI) works alongside the European External Action Service (EEAS) and other EC departments and is responsible for implementing EU external assistance relating to common foreign and security policy, electoral observations and conflict prevention. Within the context of the new Multiannual Financial Framework, the FPI’s responsibility has grown and it manages the operations for a number of EU financing instruments including the Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace, the Partnership Instrument and the Instrument for Cooperation with Industrialised Countries. It currently operates under the authority of the Vice President of the European Commission. See EC-wide commitments and recommendations.
FPI began publishing to IATI in July 2013. It has continued to improve its publication since then, including some forward-looking budget information, geo-coded location data, activity dates and tied aid status. FPI should be congratulated for this progress and for updating its common standard implementation schedule in June 2014 to include more ambitious plans for implementation. It currently plans to publish 91% of the assessed IATI fields by the end of 2015, including several added-value fields, including results and conditions.
ANALYSIS
FPI scores 69.1%, making it the highest scoring EC department and placing it in the good category. It ranks eighth out of 17 multilateral organisations. FPI performs well on organisation financial and planning information, activity classifications and basic information. It is the highest scoring EC department on financial data on individual activities. However, as with the other EC departments, it does poorly on the provision of activity-level documents and performance information (results, conditions and impact appraisals), particularly the latter for which it does not score any points. It scores on 32 of the 39 indicators included in the Index. Of the 22 indicators that take format into account, 20 are published in machine-readable formats.
RECOMMENDATIONS
- FPI should improve its publication to IATI so it is comprehensive for all the financial instruments it manages and includes links to project documents, results and conditions data.
- It should work with the EEAS to promote aid transparency and open data as part of its policy cooperation with strategic emerging partners outside the EU.
- FPI should use IATI data in EU programming and coordination processes and promote the access and use of this information by others.
DONOR PROFILE
First published to IATI:
Jul-13
2013 ATI Score:
51.14%
2013 ATI Rank:
14