United States

Four US agencies and one initiative are included in the 2018 Aid Transparency Index: the Department of Defense (DOD), the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), the Department of State (State), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The overall results show continued improvement, although at different rates. MCC remains in the ‘very good’ category. The biggest improver in the US is USAID, now in the middle of the ‘good’ category. PEPFAR is also included in the ‘good’ category. State and DOD remain in the ‘fair ‘category. The United States publishes on a quarterly basis.

The US agencies, on average, perform better than the total average for all components but performance.  For the organizational planning and commitment component all agencies but DOD receive more than 80% of the total points. MCC performs best on the finance and budget component and USAID and DOD are at the bottom, scoring 46% and 31% of the total points respectively. MCC is the only US agency to publish forward-looking budgets – all other agencies provide total budgets for the current year only except DOD, which does not provide a forward-looking budget at all. For project attributes, all score above 70% and for the joining-up development data component, all US agencies score above 80%. Three of the five US agencies, namely PEPFAR, State, and DOD, do not score on any indicators of the performance component.