7.
World Bank – International Development Association
Very good
OVERVIEW
The International Development Association (IDA), a member of the World Bank Group, provides concessional loans, grants, and debt-relief through the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative and the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI). See World Bank-wide commitments and recommendations.
The World Bank is a member of IATI and was the first multilateral organisation to publish to IATI in April 2011. It should be commended for making further improvements to its data in 2014. It has an ambitious implementation schedule, with plans to publish to 89% of the assessed IATI fields by the end of 2015. IDA updated its Access to Information Policy in July 2013. The policy makes disclosure the rule rather than the exception and clearly clarifies exceptions, which are subject to public interest overrides. However, the harm tests for exceptions and the independent appeals process are both limited in scope. IDA also publishes information through the World Bank Finances platform, providing visualisations for activities funded through development credits and grants. The information on this platform is available in nine different languages and accessible via a mobile application.
ANALYSIS
IDA scores 82.3%, placing it in very good category. It ranks fourth out of 17 multilateral organisations. Although there has been a drop in IDA’s ranking since 2013, this is a reflection of high quality publication by other organisations, and there has been an increase in IDA’s overall score by eight percentage points. IDA performs well on most sub-groups of indicators, receiving the maximum possible points on the organisation-level planning sub-group, over 90% of total possible points for the activity classifications and basic information and the provision of project documents, and over 70% for commitment, organisation financial information and performance data. It receives lower scores on financial data on individual activities as it publishes forward-looking activity budgets in PDF format and does not publish the budget ID, which aims to help align information on development flows with recipient country budget classifications. While performance and evaluation documents are available in IDA’s IATI files, structured results data is not, although this information is often available on its website. Out of the 22 indicators that take format into account, 20 are published in IATI XML format. Overall, IDA scores on 38 of the 39 indicators.
RECOMMENDATIONS
- IDA should continue to improve its publication to IATI so it is comprehensive and includes forward-looking country and activity budgets, results and conditions data.
- It should prioritise any information systems and process improvements required for automated and timely publication of high quality data to IATI.
- IDA should continue to champion aid transparency within the World Bank Group and support other institutions, including World Bank-administered trust funds in publishing to IATI.
DONOR PROFILE
First published to IATI:
Apr-11
2013 ATI Score:
73.81%
2013 ATI Rank:
5