US – Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC)
MULTIPLE AGENCY GROUP : United StatesCreated by the US Congress in 2004, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is an independent bilateral US foreign aid agency. It provides large-scale, multi-year “compacts” to eligible countries for economic growth in focused sectors. As part of the US government, US-MCC became an IATI member in 2011. It first published IATI data in January 2013.
As in previous years, US-MCC is placed in the ‘very good’ category, and is the top performing US agency.
For the first time, US-MCC began reporting directly to the IATI Registry rather than through the State Department’s “F” Bureau and has now greater control over the quality of its data.
The United States publish to the IATI Registry on a quarterly basis.
All organisational planning indicators are published in the comparable IATI format except country strategies. These, however, are consistently published in other formats.
There is room for improvement in the financial and budgetary component. The total organisation budget and disbursements and expenditures are the lowest scoring IATI indicators. While disaggregated budgets and country strategies are provided in the IATI Standard, the index tests for these also rely on the presence of the ‘recipient-country’ element. These were missing from all MCC activities on the IATI Registry. This information can be found on the organisation’s website.
US-MCC is doing well on project attributes. It has started publishing sub-national location in a comparable format, meaning all project attributes are now available in the IATI Standard.
It scores on all joining-up development indicators and apart from tenders all indicators are provided in a comparable format. Tenders are consistently being made available in other formats.
While performing relatively well on objectives and pre-project impact appraisals, no current results data but only results documents can be found in US-MCC’s IATI data. Reviews and evaluations are not published in a comparable format but can be found in other formats.
- US-MCC should ensure the quality of its IATI data by including ‘recipient-country’ elements to its activities.
- US-MCC should prioritise the publication of timely reviews and evaluations of all of its projects and activities to the IATI Standard.
- It should continue its efforts to work with the Millennium Challenge Accounts to have more granular information - beyond the compact level - from the sectors, and individual projects and activities, published to the IATI Registry.
- To demonstrate the impact of transparency on development work, US-MCC 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.