The UK Government is introducing a new ‘Aid Transparency Guarantee’, which will make our aid fully transparent to citizens in both the UK and recipient countries.
Aid transparency is critical to improving the effectiveness and value for money of aid. Making information about aid spending easier to access, use and understand means that UK taxpayers and citizens in poor countries can more easily hold DFID and recipient governments to account for using aid money wisely. Transparency creates better feedback from beneficiaries to donors and taxpayers, and helps us better understand what works and what doesn’t. It also helps reduce waste and the opportunities for fraud and corruption.
That is from a recent
press release by DFID, the UK's aid agency. Very impressive. What I like about it is that they are publicly holding themselves accountable to do things (such as beneficiary feedback) that are not yet done at any scale - which means they will have to invent it. (We are piloting beneficiary feedback at GlobalGiving and are excited about the possibilities.)
