Transparency and Participation in International Aid (DE0020)

What is the public problem that the commitment will address?
The publication of current, detailed project information and data on development cooperation
in the spirit of the open data principles provides the foundation for evidence-based decisions
and for participation in the partner countries of German development cooperation, which
is a necessary precondition for achieving international development goals. Coordination,
accountability and participation at national and international level are strengthened
considerably by open data. The IATI Standard of the International Aid Transparency Initiative,
which was agreed internationally to that end, is implemented within the Federal Government
only partially and by individual ministries. The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation
and Development (BMZ) now publishes updated data and information on a monthly basis
in accordance with the Standard (developed further within the 1st NAP), but it does not yet
entirely fulfil its requirements.
Achieving transparency goals requires additional measures to expand and improve the
quality and usability of data. Ongoing development measures should be presented in a
coherent and comprehensive way. The ministries and other participants in German development cooperation are striving for a coordinated approach to principles of transparency. We
also need to specifically promote the use of the published data, especially in developing
countries, in order to facilitate informed political participation and coordination of development cooperation. This is a matter of imparting knowledge but also of creating links with our
partners’ data systems.

What is the commitment?
Building on the dialogue process that was started with the first NAP, structured formats
with German stakeholders in development cooperation, civil society and ministries will be
expanded within the framework of the ODA transparency expert group that was founded
in 2018. These formats serve the goal of implementing and using the IATI Standard and
facilitating the coordination of basic guidelines regarding the publication of information.
The BMZ will set up a management system to optimise and safeguard data quality and to
expand German IATI reporting.
An IATI visualisation portal of the BMZ is intended to improve the usability of IATI data. A
strategy will be created to encourage the use of IATI data, especially in partner countries
and for donor coordination but also by the German public; workshops in partner countries
will be used to develop clear courses of action.

How will the commitment contribute to solving the public problem?
The measures will directly tackle the following challenges:
• Expanding, updating and consolidating the pool of information regarding German development cooperation
•Improving its potential for utilisation
•Improving all private individuals’ access, use of information and thus participation in issues concerning development cooperation, especially in Germany and our partner countries

Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values?
Transparency is a foundational principle of effective development cooperation. Disclosing
the use of funds makes German development cooperation more predictable and comprehensible.
The commitments are relevant to accountability, anti-corruption and political participation. Continuing the dialogue between state and non-state actors regarding transparent
development cooperation strengthens mutual trust and fosters long-term constructive
cooperation in the spirit of open policy design.

5. Promotion of transparency and participation in development cooperation

Main Objective

“Building on the dialogue process that was started with the first NAP, structured formats with German stakeholders in development cooperation, civil society and ministries will be expanded within the framework of the ODA transparency expert group that was founded in 2018. These formats serve the goal of implementing and using the IATI Standard and facilitating the coordination of basic guidelines regarding the publication of information. The BMZ will set up a management system to optimize and safeguard data quality and to expand German IATI reporting.

An IATI visualization portal of the BMZ is intended to improve the usability of IATI data. A strategy will be created to encourage the use of IATI data, especially in partner countries and for donor coordination but also by the German public; workshops in partner countries will be used to develop clear courses of action.”

Milestones

5.1. Utilization concept: Specifying potential for use and obstacles to use regarding IATI data. Conceptualizing and implementing support measures

5.2. Coordinating strategic steps with ministries and civil society to implement principles of open data (especially from the G8 Open Data Charter) and open government in the context of development cooperation as well as expanding IATI data reporting (regarding current data reporters and potentially additional ones)

5.3. Developing an advanced training format

5.4. Carrying out training events on the IATI Standard and IATI data for development policy players from German civil society

5.5. Introducing an IATI data QA system (especially a feedback mechanism) and expanding the BMZ’s IATA data (project reports, impact data, etc.) 

5.6. Developing a BMZ visualization portal to improve the presentation of data

Editorial Note: For the complete text of this commitment, please see Germany’s action plan at: https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Germany_Action-Plan_2019-2021_EN.pdf.

Commitment Analysis
This commitment aims to further expand the quality and scope of data on Germany’s international aid. It seeks to establish a broader dialogue with civil society and partner countries on reporting in this area, as well as on strategies for greater data use and integration. This commitment builds on Commitment 6 from Germany’s first action plan (2017−2019). This previous commitment resulted in the publication of more granular and more frequent reporting within the framework of Germany’s participation in the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). It also saw constructive dialogue with civil society through international workshops on aid transparency. [33]

This current commitment is relevant to the OGP value of access to information, as it promises to expand transparency of Germany’s development sector. It is also relevant to civic participation as it will engage civil society in evolving aid transparency and work with partner countries to develop measures for uptake and data integration.

While the government began conversations with German and international civil society groups around aid transparency during the first action plan, there remained considerable potential for expanding, deepening, and systematizing these efforts. [34] The government could also improve data presentation, usability, and usage. [35] This new commitment directly addresses some shortcomings in IATI implementation and data use. For example, producing a utilization concept (Milestone 5.1) lays the foundation for more targeted measures to promote data use and re-use. Additionally, a quality management system with a feedback function (Milestone 5.5) addresses a significant issue raised by the IATI community. More than 90% of publishers find feedback desirable but less than half solicit feedback on their platforms. [36]

The inclusion of data on impact could enable users to trace the results of projects and thus lay foundations for enhanced accountability of aid. It is also noteworthy that measures to promote data use are not confined to international or German development actors but extend to stakeholders in partner countries and the integration of reported data with information systems in host countries.

Efforts to encourage other development stakeholders inside and outside the government to adopt IATI-level reporting are important given that the current reporting landscape in the German development community is diverse and characterized by variable levels of ambition. The coordination of strategic steps with civil society could explicitly include public participation and transcend the consultative remit of the internal expert group established during the first action plan. [37] Implementing this commitment could also benefit from the considerable momentum and senior-level support for expanded aid transparency that the preceding commitment generated. [38] Finally, this implementation comes when IATI-style reporting is evolving into an important building block for integrated, high-quality information systems around humanitarian emergencies, monitoring Sustainable Development Goals, and managing partner country administrative information. [39]

For greater impact, the IRM researcher recommends ensuring high uptake of IATI standards by new reporting entities as well as transparent tracking of comments and follow-ups in the feedback system. It is also recommended to develop customizable visualization features, as well as seamless integration with other development information systems. Finally, it could be beneficial to harness the momentum around aid data to invite greater transparency in the broader aid community, including the Reconstruction Credit Institute (Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau). [40]

Commitment 5. Promotion of transparency and participation in development cooperation

Substantial:

This commitment aimed to further expand the quality and scope of data on Germany’s international aid. It envisioned a data-use concept, various training formats, strategic initiatives to enhance International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) publication, and a system to test and improve data quality and usability.

The Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) significantly increased the amount of available IATI data between 2019 and the end of 2021. During this period, the number of datasets for individual projects published via the IATI Registry onto the d-portal tripled from 9,000 to roughly 27,000 projects. ^[53]

BMZ created a use concept for IATI data and consulted relevant CSOs to identify user needs. Based on the concept, BMZ is developing a IATI Transparency Portal to improve the use of BMZ’s IATI data. The portal will offer an overview of the large number of different BMZ projects. ^[54] BMZ considers this tool key to making machine-readable datasets that are currently published on its website more user-friendly and searchable, i.e., by making data files downloadable in various user-friendly formats and searchable by sector, country, and project. ^[55] The BMZ contact said that this work will help employees at BMZ and the associated institutions, parliamentarians, and journalists who are not familiar with which existing portals to retrieve data from, or their data formats. Stakeholders from governments and civil society in partner countries are also central target groups of the IATI data. An interviewed civil society stakeholder argued that existing IATI tools already provide several of these functionalities, such as the filtering of data by sector and country. ^[56] This interviewee also stated that people working in countries receiving aid are likely to need data from multiple donors in standardized formats. Therefore, this stakeholder emphasized that BMZ could continue the positive work from this commitment by providing more data fields and increasing the level of disaggregation (geographical and temporal) of available data fields, particularly financial data. The interviewed point of contact stated that new data fields were implemented such as for co-financing partners, document links, organization identifiers and organization types, if available. These changes shall be reflected in GIZ’s and KfW’s scores of the upcoming Aid Transparency Index. According to BMZ, the new portal will compliment, rather than duplicate, existing tools by allowing the possibility to download every IATI element for the individual selection of projects of data users in XML. It will also be possible to easily download a range of information in PDF or CSV formats. Moreover, it will contain contextual information on German development cooperation, e.g., by specifying IATI-data contents in its FAQ as well as in a glossary. [57] 

According to the BMZ point of contact, BMZ has developed an internal data quality assurance system. A team contracted by the BMZ assesses the datasets received from implementing agencies and partner non-governmental organizations whenever they receive external inquiries and feedback pertaining to data’s completeness and their understandability. If this team detects inconsistencies or gaps in the data, BMZ corrects these in earlier data processing stages with its implementing agencies. Feedback pertaining to data processing stages is not considered to be opened to the public on the grounds that requests would be too context-specific and because the feedback considers internal data processing stages. The point of contact stated that the quality assurance system has helped to identify issues regarding their structure and completeness. However, this claim could not be verified as the quality assurance system is not open to the public. According to the government point of contact, training programs were carried out with the umbrella organization of development and humanitarian NGOs (VENRO).

Because the interviewed point of contact considered the visualization tool to be a crucial improvement of the way BMZ visualizes data, the future development of the transparency portal may have a positive impact on transparency of data on foreign aid. During the action plan period, BMZ has tripled the number of datasets for individual projects published via the IATI Registry onto the d-portal tripled. According to BMZ, BMZ will likely improve its 2022 Aid Transparency Index score, with preliminary results showing an increase in 6.95 percentage points compared to 2020. This would continue Germany’s positive work, as documented in earlier editions of the Aid Transparency Index. ^[58] However, because the development of the BMZ visualization portal remains ongoing at the time of writing this report, the improvements of this commitment to the presentation of IATI data have been marginal thus far.