The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) was formed out of a meeting on aid effectiveness held at Accra in 2009.In it, the donors agreed to public information regularly on funding, associated conditionalities and 3-5 year projection of funding. The reports are hosted by the donors in structured XML files in their own websites with a link to the IATI registry at http://www.iatiregistry.org/. I did a quick review of the information on the registry. The database allowed me to filter files by organization, country and an assortment of other criteria. Most of the data was provided at the aggregate level on the total funds allotted to […]
Yearly Archives: 2014
The accidental NGO and USAID transparency test: Till Bruckner writes about his effort to get information on project budgets for USAID funded NGOs in Georgia. Here is his note on the experience: The documents are disappointingly full of blacked-out non-information. The level of disclosure varies drastically from one document to the next. Some budgets are provided in full, while others appear as blacked-out row upon row. In three cases, USAID even withheld the identity of the contractor itself. USAID explained this inconsistency saying that it was legally required to contact each grantee to give it “the opportunity to address how […]
Global Reporting Initiative has created a framework for corporations to report information on the economic, social and environmental impact of their day-to-day activities. GRI provides standards of reporting and thousands of companies are producing ‘sustainability reports’ on the basis of their guidelines.
Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative is a multilateral, multi-stakeholder initiative to bring more transparency into extractive industries such as oil, mining and gas. The initiative recognizes that natural resources belong to people and the public revenue raised from them should reach the people. The focus of the initiative has been on ensuring that companies disclose tax payments and governments do the same in terms of taxes they receive from companies.
XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language. It is a set of standards for reporting financial and business information in a way that machines can read the reports, compare and analyze them easily. It presents a set of standardized vocabulary so that similar information can be presented using similar language by different companies. Recognizing that one standard set of concepts may not cover every possible situation, the system allows national regulators and even individual companies to create terms that are useful for their unique situations (this ability to eXtend the vocabulary is represented “X” of XBRL). A short video introducing […]
XBRL for private sector transparency
Discusses laws for disclosure of information from the private sector for specific goals that the authors call "targeted transparency". Discuss how such disclosures can be effective.
Full disclosure: The perils and promise of transparency
The book discusses different ways in which access to information laws are being undermined around the world.
Blacked out: Government secrecy in the Information Age
LittleSis is a free database detailing the connections between powerful people and organizations. The name is a play on ‘big brother’ which stands for the monitoring of common people by the powerful. Little Sis does the opposite by monitoring those in positions of power. This is a project of Public Accountability Initiative and it tracks key relationships among politicians, business leaders, lobbyists, financiers, and their affiliated institutions. It helps answer questions such as: “Who do the wealthiest Americans donate their money to? Where did White House officials work before they were appointed? Which lobbyists are married to politicians, and who do they lobby for?” […]
The Upstate NY Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars I lived in Syracuse, New York for five years and one of my biggest surprises was to meet a large number of committed peace activists in this very small town. I was impressed by their courage, commitment and their sustained stand against wars and injustice. They started a coalition along with fellow activists in other parts of Upstate New York to protest the establishment of a base to operate drones in places as far as Afghanistan. The perfectly peaceful protests (a few of which I have taken part in) have faced many legal hassles including […]
Internet can add power to the right to information. How well this happens depends on how government websites are designed. Digital technologies can add power to the right to information movement by making information easily, quickly and cheaply accessible. But for online data to be effective, government websites have to be suitably designed. The 8 principles A good starting point for the design principles is a set of eight far-reaching principles developed by Sunlight Foundation. These are: Complete: All public data are made available. Public data are data that are not subject to valid privacy, security or privilege limitations. Primary: Data […]
8 principles of open government data & beyond
More than authenticating identities, these small devices acted as simple Point of Sale devices that automated much paperwork.
The unexpected use of a biometric device
eGovernments Foundation: “eGovernments Foundation is a not-for-profit trust founded in 2003 by Nandan Nilekani and Srikanth Nadhamuni with a goal of creating an eGovernance system to improve the functioning of City Municipalities leading to efficient delivery of services to its stakeholders…eGov products have been successfully deployed in more than 275 Municipalities across the country. These include state wide implementations in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh as well as large corporations like Corporation of Chennai, Municipal Corporation of Delhi, Bangalore Mahanagar Palike, Nagpur Municipal Corporation and Kanpur Nagar Nigam”