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.

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.

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.

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.

What We’re Hoping To See In The Next Release Of USAID Data

By: Staff Person
October 15, 2013

There are other improvements USAID could make. These range from the seemingly nitpicky but actually crucial (like making sure that unique identifiers for organizations are present, consistent and accurate), to the more obviously important (like providing information on results). The way in which data is currently presented on the Dashboard is also an obstacle to use. Still, making these changes would go a long ways to making this data useful to all stakeholders.

The (Re-)Birth of the Rethinking US Development Policy Program

By: Staff Person
September 9, 2013

To reflect the changing times, the Rethink program will change as well. I will be taking a more expansive view – broadening the program’s scope from a singular focus on U.S. foreign assistance to a wider assessment of U.S. development policy tools. In doing this, I will be drawing upon the Center’s immense in-house expertise across a full range of issues.

Planting the Seeds of Sustainability in South Sudan

By: Staff Person
August 26, 2013

Small sums can generate big returns—in this case for both farmers and USAID. USAID made a modest investment of resources—the staff time of a small team—to conduct the cost-benefit analysis, and in doing so, increased the development impact of taxpayer dollars significantly. Farmers in South Sudan, one of the world’s poorest countries, stand to benefit economically from the findings of this analysis—a potential path out of poverty.

Local Ownership: Who, What, and How

By: Staff Person
August 15, 2013

See below for excerpts from a piece by Melissa Kaplan, advocacy manger for aid reform and effectiveness at InterAction. Kaplan writes about local ownership and the recent report from Mercy Corps that uses extensive field research and interviews to examine how local ownership is being implemented–ultimately providing recommendations to USAID for how the agency can improve its efforts.

USAID Adds Financial Transaction Data to Dashboard

By: Staff Person
July 30, 2013

The information that has recently been posted is referred to as “financial transaction data”—data regarding disbursements including vendors, locations, award titles, etc. While all USAID data previously published on the Dashboard is aggregated, the new, disaggregated records contribute greatly to the depth of information available within certain countries and sectors.