Transparency in Development Policy (DE0006)

Description: To meet international transparency requirements in Germany’s development cooperation, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) will carry out consultations and improve data quality. Aim: In addition to meeting international transparency requirements in Germany’s development cooperation, the quality and quantity of data is to be improved. Moreover, civil society and the government are to engage in forms of transparency dialogue (events, workshops), and a more userfriendly data format for BMZ IATI information is to be developed. Status quo: Transparency and accountability are key concerns of Germany’s development policy. At the Fourth High-level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan in 2011, participants agreed on introducing a uniform transparency standard for development services. This Common Open Standard for Aid Transparency is based on the requirements of the statistical reporting system of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the standard of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), of which Germany was a founding member. With the Common Open Standard for Transparency, donor and partner countries as well as civil society and public sector organizations jointly seek to provide comprehensive and understandable information about how the money of international development cooperation is spent. In December 2012, the BMZ published a national plan to implement the transparency standards. Since March 2013, it has been publishing comprehensive information about projects and programmes of bilateral development cooperation in line with the IATI standard. To improve the quality and quantity of the data, the BMZ works closely with its executive organizations. To advance implementation of the international transparency requirements in Germany’s development cooperation, the BMZ has entered into a more intensive dialogue with the federal ministries and civil society. Since 2008, the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB) has been publishing information about all projects of the International Climate Initiative (IKI); since June 2016 IKI data have been published in line with the IATI standard. New or ongoing: ongoing Implemented by: Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development Organizations involved in implementation: Federal executive agencies (GIZ, KfW), BMUB, Federal Foreign Office Organizational unit and contact: Division 414, Karin.Jansen@bmz.bund.de Ambition: The BMZ continuously seeks to improve the quality and quantity of its data, thus promoting transparency in development cooperation, laying the foundation for effective development cooperation also in view of implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Open government values addressed: Participation, transparency, accountability, technology/innovation Relevance: Transparency in development cooperation is a key measure that meets the requirements of good governance and accountability. In addition, implementing the IATI standard fulfils secondary requirements by involving businesses and civil society and creating technical prerequisites and interoperability standards for re-using the data (also as open data).

6. Transparency in Development Policy

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:

“To meet international transparency requirements in Germany’s development cooperation, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) will carry out consultations and improve data quality.”

Milestones:

6.1 Carrying out at least two events/workshops

6.2 Optimizing data quality and quantity of the IATI record published by the BMZ

6.3 Publishing an updated and detailed BMZ IATI record monthly

6.4 Setting up an expert group (of the federal administration) to discuss issues of open development policy, also with civil society

Start Date: June 2017

End Date: May 2019

Context and Objectives

According to the action plan, “[t]ransparency and accountability are key concerns of Germany’s development policy.” [25] In 2012, Germany developed a national action plan to implement a 2011 commitment by major development donors to work toward a common standard for the transparency of development services. Since 2013, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, has published an increased amount of information on its aid programming. Its reporting aligns with the reporting formats of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).

This commitment seeks to help further improve the quality and usability of this reporting, in close consultation with civil society. Milestone 6.4 calls for establishing an expert group with civil society to discuss issues of open data.

Publish What You Fund, a nongovernmental organization specializing in aid transparency, welcomes the move. The group rates Germany’s aid transparency performance as “good” and “fair,” respectively, for its technical cooperation as implemented by GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit) and for its financial cooperation as implemented by KfW Entwicklungsbank. The group also identified room for improvement, for example, regarding subnational granularity, local feedback loops, performance-related information, and promotion of the disclosure efforts. [26]

Granular, comprehensive, and timely reporting of aid flows stand as prerequisites for transparency and accountability. These characteristics enable both recipients and donors to follow the money, identify if articulated policy priorities match actual financial allocations, and explore how the latter do or do not translate into outcomes, impact, and local stakeholder engagement.

Milestone 6.4 calls for setting up an expert group within the federal government to discuss issues of open data and exchange with civil society. The commitment is relevant to access to information and civic participation. However, the commitment is not relevant to technology and innovation, as online publishing alone does not meet the qualifications for this area.

The milestones are verifiable but only generally. Plans to optimize data quality (6.2) or carry out workshops (6.1) do not explain in sufficient detail how these measures would open government beyond what IATI already affords. While adequate data quality is a critical issue for all IATI participants it is part of already existing IATI expectations and upgrades are unlikely to exceed these expectations. Switching to a monthly updating cycle (6.3), as opposed to the current practice of updating every six months, is a noteworthy improvement with which the ministry joins around fifty other IATI participants committed to such a target. The overall potential impact of this commitment on opening government is however judged as minor, absent more details on envisioned targets for the milestones.

Next steps

Development aid transparency is an important policy area and therefore could be carried forward to the next action plan. The IRM researcher recommends that:

• activities and milestones be linked to more specific targets and performance criteria in terms of improving data quality and civil society participation in the International Aid Transparency Initiative implementation context;
• amended and/or additional milestones in this area for the second action plan explicitly consider the shortcomings and priorities identified by leading civil society’s aid transparency assessments (such as those from Publish What You Fund); [27] and
• forward-looking commitments in this area explore and work toward responses to the emerging challenges of aid transparency in the context of blended-finance mechanisms. [28]

[25] Federal Government of Germany. First National Action Plan 2017–2019, 17, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/germany-action-plan-2019-2021/.

[26] “Germany,” Publish What You Fund, http://www.publishwhatyoufund.org/donors/germany/#.

[27] Publish What You Fund homepage, http://www.publishwhatyoufund.org/.

[28] “Better Blending: Making the Case for Transparency and Accountability in Blended Finance,” Transparency International, 18 December 2018, https://www.transparency.org/whatwedo/publication/better_blending.

6. Transparency in Development Policy

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:

“To meet international transparency requirements in Germany’s development cooperation, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) will carry out consultations and improve data quality.”

Milestones:

6.1 Carrying out at least two events/workshops

6.2 Optimizing data quality and quantity of the IATI record published by the BMZ

6.3 Publishing an updated and detailed BMZ IATI record monthly

6.4 Setting up an expert group (of the federal administration) to discuss issues of open development policy, also with civil society

Start Date: June 2017

End Date: May 2019

This commitment focused on enhancing the transparency of Germany’s aid programming. The milestones covered increasing reporting, frequency, and quality of data, as well as mechanisms to expand, refine, and integrate disclosure mechanisms in collaboration with other government agencies, experts, and civil society.

Overall, this commitment saw substantial implementation, despite the ambiguity of some of the planned activities. All milestones have been implemented although the schedule for the activities and their sequencing experienced a delay of several months. Two workshops on aid transparency with civil society participants were held in March 2018 and May 2019 respectively (milestone 6.1). [42] Under milestone 6.2, several new data fields were added to Germany’s International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) reporting, including more granular sectoral descriptions, links to transparency portals of implementing agencies, and foreign language project descriptions with more detailed coded descriptions of the roles of participating organizations.

The reporting frequency for the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) data was upgraded from every quarterly to monthly (milestone 6.3). [43] An expert group for open development policy was established within the federal administration (milestone 6.4) and an expansion of the dialogue with civil society is planned for Germany’s next action plan.

Interviews with government representatives clearly highlighted the value of the OGP process in this commitment. Germany was already committed to a specific level of aid transparency prior to the action plan through its engagement with the IATI initiative. However, according to government representatives, this commitment’s milestones and their related monitoring and assessment frameworks helped raise the level of ambition and implement reporting upgrades in a much shorter timeframe than would have otherwise occurred. [44] In particular, a meeting with OGP representatives attended by a Parliamentary State Secretary (Parl. Staatssekretaer), as well as strong national-level coordination through the Federal Chancellery’s office, helped boost senior-level visibility inside the BMZ and focused attention on these issues. In addition, the meetings with civil society were described as highly constructive and created an atmosphere of trust in an area often characterized by a diverse set of opinions, particularly on transparency in difficult operational contexts such as fragile states. An invitation from an NGO consortium to the ministry for participating in an event on aid transparency further attests to this conclusion. [45]

As a result, the improvements on transparency in development policy have been major, with the potential to grow. More frequent and comprehensive reporting enhances both transparency and the utility of the shared data. The constructive exchange with civil society bodes well for a further expansion of these efforts and other further reaching opportunities as outlined in the IRM Design Report. [46] At the same time, the challenge to convert data supply into effective data use and reuse remains an area to be addressed. Also, both civil society and expert observers continue to demand more transparency for accountability-related information, such as closing local feedback loops or the publication of full evaluation reports. [47] Substantive progress on this long-standing demand, in combination with the achievements under this commitment, could open up government even further.

The inclusion of this policy area in Germany’s second action plan (Commitment 5), which aims to continue and expand both the reporting efforts and dialogue with civil society around aid transparency, further attests to the successful foundations that this commitment has laid down. The new commitment also plans to produce a utilization concept to promote data use and re-use as well as a quality management system with a feedback function. Both activities could help address issues previously raised by the IATI community.

[42] Event “Zehn Jahre IATI - Transparenz für mehr Wirksamkeit?“, Berlin, 15 March 2018; event “Transparenz für gute Entwicklungszusammenarbeit: Perspektiven, Chancen, Herausforderungen“Berlin, 21 May 2019.

[43] Email communication with implementing BMZ department and https://iatiregistry.org/publisher/bmz

[44] Interview with responsible government representative, 18 December 2019.

[45] Ibid and email questionnaire completed and submitted by related department.

[46] IRM Germany Design Report 2017-2019, p 34, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Germany_Design-Report_2017-2019_EN.pdf

[47] OECD-DAC 2018, Germany Mid-term Review, 7 November 2018, Berlin; German Institute for Development Evaluation 2018, Sustainability in German Development Cooperation; Publish What You Fund 2018, Aid Transparency Index, https://www.publishwhatyoufund.org/the-index/2018/germany-bmz-giz/