24.
Finland – Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Fair
OVERVIEW
As an EU Member State, Finland is part of the EU’s collective commitment to both the EU Transparency Guarantee and the Busan common standard, of which IATI is a core component. It began publishing to IATI in November 2011. In June 2014, it published current data to the IATI Registry for the first time, publishing information on ODA provided in 2013. It also updated its moderately ambitious implementation schedule to include plans to publish 46% of the assessed IATI fields by the end of 2015. Finland’s current IATI publication primarily includes traditional CRS fields. Information on ODA flows reported to OECD’s DAC CRS and aggegate information on future flows is available on the new Development Cooperation Statistics Database launched in 2014, however information on current activities was included only after data collection for the 2014 Index had ended. Finland has joined OGP but its National Action Plan does not include any commitments specific to aid transparency. It has also endorsed the Open Aid Partnership.
ANALYSIS
Finland scores 46.3%, placing it in the fair category. It ranks 11th out of 50 bilateral organisations. It is one of the biggest improvers in 2014, gaining over 23 percentage points from the 2013 ATI. It performs well on activity classification information, scoring over 80% on this sub-group of indicators. It also publishes organisation planning and financial information consistently, although this is not available via its IATI files. It lags behind on results and conditions data, for which it does not score any points. Of the 22 indicators that take format into account, over two thirds are currently published in machine-readable formats, however some important fields are still missing from its IATI publication including current status, sub-national location, forward-looking activity budgets, results and conditions data and activity documents. Activity documents appear to be consistently available on the MFA’s website, suggesting that these could also be published through its IATI feed. Overall, it does not score on 11 of the 39 indicators.
RECOMMENDATIONS
- Finland should improve its IATI publication so it is comprehensive and includes data on results and conditions, links to project documents and sub-national location. It should also publish a more complete organisation file.
- It should update its implementation schedule in 2014 so it is more ambitious, including specific timelines and delivery targets, aiming towards full publication of the IATI Standard by the end of 2015.
- Finland should use its IATI data in its programming and coordination processes and promote access to this data, in the first instance via an open data portal.
- It should update its OGP National Action Plan to include commitments on aid transparency.
DONOR PROFILE
First published to IATI:
Nov-11
2013 ATI Score:
22.99%
2013 ATI Rank:
39