ICTworks

USAID has been busy lately with a redesign and roll-out of the new USAID.gov. You can now access first-generation interactive maps at the country level for 40 missions.

In addition, as part of the USAID evaluation policy that ‘sets ambitious standards for the quality and transparency of evaluation to demonstrate results, generate evidence to inform decisions, promote learning and ensure accountability’ the page that houses the Development Experience Clearinghouse (DEC) has been revamped. You can now search 50 years of international aid records, submit reports, and ‘get social’ by sharing, rating, tagging and blogging. Introduction videos are available to help you get started.

Not only is there better looking and more accessible information on-line, you can get two mobile applications (available for iPhone and iPad):

• The DEC mobile app provides access to a subset of USAID Development Experience Clearinghouse (DEC) documents (recent evaluations).
• The Portfolio Map mobile app allows you to browse the USAID portfolio for a subset of the countries in which USAID is working, access general country overviews at a glance and get more detailed information as needed.

In other news, alongside their own new website, on June 25th, 2012, USAID together with the Department of State announced publication of USAID’s foreign assistance obligation and expenditure data for Fiscal Year 2009-2011 on the Foreign Assistance Dashboard.

As explained during the DC Technology Salon on ‘How will IATI impact international development,’ the Dashboard is the US Government’s main tool for improving foreign aid transparency. It will play a key role in US Government reporting of foreign assistance data to the international community, one of the measures agreed on when the US Government signed onto the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) in November 2011.

According to the June 25th press release, ‘the Dashboard also has budget planning data for the Department of State and USAID, as well as the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC)’s foreign assistance budget planning, obligation, and expenditure data. Data on the site can be manually queried, filtered, and downloaded by users for further analysis.

The Dashboard is designed to allow a range of stakeholders, including U.S. citizens, civil society organizations, Congress, U.S. Government agencies, donors, and partner country governments; to examine, research, and track foreign assistance data in an accessible and easy-to-understand format. It aims to allow users to explore the impact of U.S. foreign assistance funding by country, sector, initiative, and agency by presenting data in a standard and user-friendly way.

According to USAID, ‘as the lead agency in implementing U.S. foreign assistance activities around the world, the launch of USAID obligation and expenditure data on the Foreign Assistance Dashboard represents a significant step forward in the U.S. Government’s efforts to make foreign assistance more transparent.’ (For additional discussion on this point, see the summary post from the aforementioned Technology Salon.)

The Dashboard is currently in an early stage of development. The site eventually plans for the incorporation of ‘budget, financial, program, and performance data in a standard form from all U.S. Government agencies receiving or implementing foreign assistance, humanitarian, and/or development funds.’ (See the table below for an idea of what is currently done and what is coming up.)

For more information about the Dashboard, see the Top Ten Things You Should Know page.

With all this information being made more accessible to everyone, it will be interesting to see if and how it’s used by different people and institutions for different purposes, especially in terms of improving coordination, program planning, transparency, accountability and aid effectiveness.