Korea – International Cooperation Agency (KOICA)
Established by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) is responsible for the effective implementation of Korea’s grant aid and technical assistance programmes. Korea-KOICA became an IATI member in January 2016 and first published IATI data in August of the same year.
Korea-KOICA is in the ‘poor’ category.
It started publishing to the IATI Registry for the first time.
Korea-KOICA publishes less than quarterly and out of 36 indicators, only 10 are available in the comparable IATI format.
Korea-KOICA provides all organisational planning indicators on their website but does not publish them in a comparable format. Korea-KOICA has updated its freedom of information policy and now scores full points for the quality of FOAI indicator.
It does not publish any of the finance and budget indicators in the IATI format but consistently publishes commitments, capital spend and project budget documents on their website. A total organisation budget and disaggregated budgets are provided for 2-years ahead and in a machine-readable format. Data on disbursements and expenditures as well as project budgets are not being made available.
Korea-KOICA publishes all project attributes indicators apart from contact details and implementer to IATI. However, the information for both descriptions and sub-national location did not meet the definition of the given indicators. Information about the sub-national location of projects and contact details are consistently published in other formats whereas information about the implementer is only provided for some projects.
Three out of seven indicators of the joining-up development data, namely flow data, aid type and finance type data, are made available in a comparable format. While not published to the IATI Registry, both contracts and tenders are always published in other formats. Conditions are published sometimes but no information is to be found about tied aid status.
None of the performance indicators is published to IATI. While objectives are always published in other formats, other performance indicators, namely reviews and evaluations, results and pre-project impact appraisals are provided for some but not for all projects.
- Korea-KOICA should improve the frequency of its publication and publish on a quarterly, if not monthly, basis.
- It should improve the comprehensiveness of its IATI publication to include financial and budgetary information in particular.
- It should prioritise timely and consistent publication of performance-related information, including reviews and evaluations as well as results.
- To demonstrate the impact of transparency on development work, Korea-KOICA should take responsibility to promote the use of the data they publish: internally, to promote coordination and effectiveness; and externally, to explore online and in-person feedback loops, including at country-level.