Aid transparency - New international initiative looks at transparency projects in Kenya and Brazil

From October 20 – 21st Anne Babcock and Rob Worthington participated in the first International Aid Transparency Initiative Conference. They presented their work on mapping HIV services and spending at the community level in Kenya. You can access the presentation here.

For an aid transparency perspective expected outcomes of this work include:
• New way of sharing more and better aid information, involving CBOs and end beneficiaries
• Inform donors and governments of the quality and availability of services
• Inform donors and governments of the quality and availability of HIV, AIDS and TB services
• Increased accountability and coordination

IATI is a multi-stakeholder initiative which aims to increase the availability and accessibility of information about aid. This will help to ensure that aid is used in the most effective ways in fighting poverty. IATI aims to make aid more effective in fighting poverty through improving transparency over aid flows. It does this by bringing together donors, developing countries, civil society organisations (CSOs) and aid information experts to agree ways of sharing more and better information about aid.

Participants from donor agencies, partner country governments, and CSOs came together at the conference to explore aid transparency within the broader context of ownership, domestic accountability and mutual accountability.

Of particular interest was the Brazilian presentation on Empowering Citizens: Experiences in promoting government accountability to citizens in Brazil. Check it out at http://www.portaltransparencia.gov.br/ it does a remarkable job at publishing government spending in a dynamic, user-friendly and interactive way.

Additional information of the work of conference participants can be found below.
• Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/
• Development Gateway http://www.developmentgateway.com
• Aid Info - http://www.aidinfo.org/
• Kenya AIDS Service Map - http://www.kanco.ushahidi.com
• More on IATI can be found at http://aidtransparency.net