Expectations for the President’s 2015 Budget

By: Staff Person
February 26, 2014

The President has signaled that he wants to move past our current period of austerity that has defined White House and Congressional budgets for a number of years. What will this mean for foreign assistance and development issues? Will foreign aid still comprise just 1% of the total budget? Will it include dedicated funding for the President’s new Power Africa initiative? Where do administration initiatives such as Feed the Future, the Global Health Initiative, and other new ventures fit? My crystal ball is notoriously cloudy, but here’s where I think some of this will go.

2013 SOTU’s Vision For Global Poverty & Progress: How Far Have We Come?

By: Staff Person
January 31, 2014

At a time when we would wish we were closer to reaching the MDGs, and our optimism is burdened by continued poverty and the accompanying hunger, ill-health and strife, it is important to celebrate the progress that has been made and the good efforts that are being made by the U.S. government, private U.S. organizations and individuals, and their counterparts around the world. It also is important to note that there remain other significant parts to the development agenda and commitments to be fulfilled—making our aid process more accountable through better evaluation, transparency, and learning; moving from good policy to actual implementation of local ownership, starting with listening to the needs and solutions of local institutions and individuals; effectively promoting open, democratic political institutions and civil society; and leveraging the talents and experiences outside of government, including the private sector, nongovernmental organizations and academia.

Final Paper Reviewing U.S. Pledge to GPE Examines U.S. Support to Local Institutions

By: Staff Person
January 24, 2014

With input from visits to Liberia, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Zambia, the third and final installment of Towards Collaborative Support to Global Education: A Review of the U.S. Pledge to the Global Partnership for Education takes an in-depth look at USAID Forward, with a particular focus on progress USAID has made towards meeting its goal to provide more direct investment in partner country governments and local organizations and businesses.

Something Rotten in the State of Denmark

By: Staff Person
January 14, 2014

Just how inefficient is the U.S. system, which was created decades ago to help find a way to dispose of government-held stocks of agricultural commodities? More than half of every dollar spent on U.S. food programs currently goes to shipping and transportation costs, rather than to lifesaving food, which means that a great deal of that money is ending up in coffers of companies like Maersk.

Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan Makes the Case for More Flexible Food Aid

By: Staff Person
November 20, 2013

The House/Senate conference on the farm bill should adopt not just the modest change of 20 percent flexibility found in the Senate bill, but allow up to 30-40 percent, or, even better, 50 percent of our food assistance to be used for local and regional purchase if that is the most efficient and readily available source.

Open the books on foreign aid

By: Staff Person
November 19, 2013

“Civil society in recipient countries must fight for accountability and transparency of poverty reducing aid in their respective countries, but we can’t do that without timely and comprehensive data on where U.S. aid dollars are going in their country.”

The 2013 Aid Transparency Index: MCC Tops The List, But Room For Improvement In U.S. Government

By: Staff Person
October 31, 2013

The report praised the MCC’s progress on transparency, and congratulated the agency for publishing high-quality information in line with the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), an initiative working to make information about spending on development easier to access, understand, and use. It also pointed out that all of the MCC’s current Compacts and Threshold Programs are published in IATI XML on MCC’s website, and the information on the Foreign Assistance Dashboard includes planning, obligation, and spending data.

MCC Named Most Transparent Donor in 2013 Aid Transparency Index

By: Staff Person
October 24, 2013

U.S. progress in terms of making data available is notable—and the State Department announced this week that the U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF) joined State, DOD, USAID, MCC, and Treasury in adding data to the Foreign Assistance Dashboard. But it is essential that the data be useful. Publishing to the IATI Standard, the only open data standard for aid information, ensures that data is comparable and usable for donors and recipients of aid.

2013 Aid Transparency Index

By: Staff Person
October 24, 2013

At the policy level, the commitment and leadership of the Obama administration—through several White House directives instructing all agencies to embrace open government and open data that is machine readable and readily usable—has been superb. It has demonstrated it understands the value of making U.S. assistance data publicly available through the innovative Foreign Assistance Dashboard and subsequent agreement to join the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).