The Aid Transparency Index (the Index) is the most powerful incentive for major aid organisations to improve the quantity and quality of the data they publish in the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) Standard. The Index process includes 50 donor agencies who together publish 92% of all the published IATI data. Released every two years, the Index ranking shapes the publishing behaviours of major aid agencies – a fact under-pinned by independent academic research. The launch of each Index is accompanied by substantial media coverage and draws political attention to the issue of aid transparency. Between editions of the Index, IATI data quality decreases. Many stakeholders believe that without the Aid Transparency Index, IATI would not have succeeded as an initiative.

The Aid Transparency Index has tracked the transparency of the largest international aid organisations since 2012. For the 2022 and 2024 Indexes we reviewed 50 agencies against a set of 35 indicators. These indicators correspond to different types of aid information and are principally scored based on the publication and quality of IATI data. Scores for each indicator contribute to an overall score out of 100. We then produce a ranking of overall transparency scores.

Agencies act on our feedback to improve their data during the Index process

The two-stage Index assessment is a collaborative process. Following an initial scoring, we engage with agencies to provide detailed feedback on their performance against each of the 35 indicators. Agencies act on this feedback to improve their data quality in time for the final assessment. For the 2024 Index we saw an increase of 6.0 points in the overall average score between the first and second rounds of assessment – a significant improvement which translates to more timely, good quality and useable aid data.

The Index provides the only manual quality checks of IATI data

The Index process is the only quality check that reads and reviews the IATI data itself – Publish What You Fund manually reviews the quality of documents and data for 12 of the indicators. We take a sample of activities for each indicator and review the documents or data points to ensure they are of good quality and meet the indicator criteria. The Publish What You Fund team manually reviewed a total of 18,500 documents and data points for the 2024 Index.

The agencies in the Index account for the vast majority of spending published to IATI

The Index covers the agencies that account for 84.4% of all activities published in the IATI Standard. The agencies in the Index make up 92% of the total spending recorded in IATI in 2023 (US$237 billion). Results from the Index have shown an incremental but persistent increase in the quality of aid data published by these organisations.

The Index helps to define high standards for aid transparency

The Index helps to define aid transparency and data quality by setting out detailed criteria, which we continue to refine over time in collaboration with the aid transparency community. Small changes to the assessment and scoring approaches over iterations of the Index have ratcheted up the transparency requirements of the assessment. This means that overall data quality as measured by the Index is significantly better than at any other time.

The Index draws strong media attention to aid transparency

The Index regularly makes headline news during its launch week. The 2024 Index launch was hosted at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. The Index was covered by 60 media outlets and organisation websites and generated 30 million impressions on Twitter/X using the hashtag #2024Index.

The Index influences policy and reaches senior officials

The reputation of the Aid Transparency Index, built up over years of running a credible, objective, evidence-based assessment and ranking of aid transparency, has led to significant policy influence. The norm-setting and behaviour influencing power of the Aid Transparency Index was studied in depth for a peer reviewed academic article. Because of the reputation dynamics that result from the scores and rankings, senior officials in many of the assessed organisations pay close attention to performance. We have been made aware that top level officials from development banks, government ministers, chief executives of multi-billion-dollar funds and agencies, senior directors and others follow and respond to the Index assessments and results.

This creates powerful incentives to enhance data quality and fosters a policy environment conducive to greater transparency. It also facilitates resource mobilisation to support transparency efforts, strengthening both systems and dedicated transparency teams. The Index has been used as a benchmark in numerous government policy papers including the UK’s international development white paper.

The Index encourages agencies to start publishing to IATI

Many international agencies have started publishing IATI data for the first time or become IATI members after being included in the Index. Recently the United Arab Emirates, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MOFAIC) began publishing detailed IATI data about its activities after featuring in the Index for several years.

The Index boosts data quality, but things slide between editions of the Index

Encouraging aid agencies to start IATI publication was the main role of the Index in its early years. Now most of the agencies we assess publish at least some IATI data. The progress, however, has been uneven and quality is not where it needs to be. Between editions of the Index many major aid agencies don’t update their data, and for those that do, the quality, completeness and timeliness of their data declines significantly. Today, the Index’s primary role is to protect the rapidly deteriorating global aid dataset.

This chart below shows the impact of the Aid Transparency Index on data quality as an average across all agencies. It demonstrates that data quality declines during the periods between Indexes, and then improves significantly when organisations are assessed in the Index. Each edition of the Index involves two periods of checking publisher data. The first of these will normally take place 18 months following the production of the previous Index. By comparing the average scores of agencies between these two points we can map a deterioration in the quality of the information they are publishing.

For the 2026 Index we will be introducing a new publication frequency measure that will factor in updates made over the entire two-year period between Indexes which should help to ameliorate these dips in quality.

The Index assessment helps identify and fix major issues with data sets

Aid agencies improve their IATI data in response to feedback from their Index assessment. The Index process also uncovers major issues with datasets and alerts agencies to these. Over recent Indexes we have identified entire bilateral donor datasets that have been left without updates for several years. Through our manual checks of the data we have found numerous systemic issues such as agencies that have reversed the coordinates on all of their geo-locations making them useless or systemic errors in document links. And we have found entire agency datasets that have been duplicated.

The Aid Transparency Index plays a unique role in enhancing IATI data quality, promoting the importance of IATI data publication, raising awareness of aid transparency standards, and generating the political momentum needed to advance the transparency movement. Its influence stems from over a decade of rigorous, independent assessments and a collaborative approach that actively engages major aid agencies in its mission.