The United States Foreign Assistance Dashboard was updated
to include USAID’s foreign assistance obligation and expenditure data. The
dashboard also provides access to data from the Department of State and the
Millennium Challenge Corporation in a user-friendly format. The UK’s Department
for International Development plans to release more data to the public, including results and detailed maps of
international aid projects. Along with the release of data will be a complete
overhaul of the public portal data.gov.uk. Kosovo’s newly updated Aid Management
Portal makes aid information easily accessible and includes
visualizations and maps of projects throughout the country. If you haven’t seen it, you might also want to check out the 2012
report on the Adoption of the Declaration on Open and Transparent
Government, which details
the many ways open government data are being
used.
The Overseas Development Institute's recent publication of a report on “Understanding
public attitudes to aid and development” has
stirred a fair amount of online discussion and debate. Leni Wild, a contributor to The New Statesman, made the case that the public wants to know how aid
works--they want the stories of the progress being made. On the Guardian’s
Poverty Matters Blog, Mark Tran provided examples of
NGOs that are trying to communicate success stories; he says there needs to be
a move away from the “heart-string appeals.” Global Dashboard’s Alex Glennie
also discussed how the report shows that the
public differentiates between aid and development, with the former being viewed with more
skepticism. Linda Raftree responds to a similar report, “Who cares? Challenges and opportunities in communicating
distant suffering; a view from the development and humanitarian sector,”
on her blog Wait…What? Raftree discusses the issue of fundraising approaches
that can be seen as demeaning, disrespectful, and undignified, but seem to get
the public to open up their pocket books.
The new UK aid logo, which includes the Union Jack,
has started some interesting conversations. Questions on when and how to take credit for aid have
cropped up, while others wonder if it will increase
accountability, as a picture of a derelict school with UKAID
emblazoned across it would likely provoke a
reaction. What are your thoughts on branding aid projects?
Featured dataset:
This week we're trying out a new idea--the AidData website has links to lots of
datasets on aid flows, activities, and related development topics that users
might not know about. In the hope that some readers might find it useful, we'll
start highlighting a specific dataset each week. To begin, the Research Datasets page includes a link to
the Financial Tracking
Service (FTS), which is a global, real-time database that records
all reported international humanitarian aid since 2000. FTS is managed by the United Nations Office
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), and you can
find the data here.
Taryn Davis is a Communications Intern at Development Gateway.
1 comment:
I'm reminded of the time I walked down a dusty dirt path in rural Cambodia, and saw the USAID "From the American People" sign on the door to a small deserted shack behind a locked gate from the rest of the village and the road. Not that I have any idea what the project was or how the shack had been used. But clearly branding can work both ways, reminding beneficiaries of what benevolent government has their backs or which ones are spending money on projects they don't even have access to.
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