Gates Foundation in collaboration with other organizations are building a unique identifier for philanthropic organizations across the globe. The project is called BRIDGE (Basic Registry of Identified Global Entities). The hope of the project is to collate information from millions of sources so as to create greater information sharing and to enhance transparency of the philanthropic sector. This interview with Victor Vrana of the Gates Foundation provides details on the ambitions of the project and how it came about.
standards
Many organizations respond simultaneously during humanitarian crises and coordination between them is a challenge. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is working on information management practices for sharing and accessing information. One component of this effort is to develop a standard vocabulary – the Humanitarian eXchange Language (HXL). More information on the initiative can be found in the project website.
The Open Contracting Partnership is working on a set of data standards for information on public procurement. OCP explains the need for standards as: Governments around the world spend an estimated US $9.5 trillion every year through contracts. Yet in most countries, information about these contracts is unavailable for public scrutiny, rendering the contracting process vulnerable to corruption and mismanagement. This project aims to enhance and promote disclosure and participation in public contracting by creating a simple, machine-readable and easy-to-understand open data standard. The draft document on the data standards for procurement is available for public comments and comments will be reviewed after Sept 30, […]
The INGO Accountability Charter is a commitment of international NGOs to a high standard of transparency, accountability and effectiveness. The Charter provides the only global, fully comprehensive and cross-sectoral accountability framework for NGOs driven by NGOs. The Charter defines standards on areas of NGOs’ work, such as governance, programme effectiveness and fundraising. International NGOs that become members of the Charter are required to report annually on fulfilling these commitments using a reporting tool developed for the purpose. The charter outlines 10 “Accountability commitments” viz: Respect for human rights, independence, transparency, good governance, responsible advocacy, participation, diversity/inclusion, environmental responsibility, ethical fundraising […]
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
The Popolo Project: A collaborative project for building international open government data specifications relating to the legislative branch of government, so that civil society can spend less time transforming data and more time applying it to the problems they face. A related goal is to make it easier for civic developers to create government transparency, monitoring and engagement websites, by developing reusable open source components that implement the specifications. Although the data specification is designed primarily for open government use cases, many other use cases are supported.