Publish What You Fund

Publish What You Fund is a global campaign for Aid transparency. It campaigns for the disclosure of timely, accessible and comparable information on aid by aid agencies and organisations.

Contents

Background

Publish What You Fund was launched in Accra at the High Level Forum[1] in September 2008 by Kumi Naidoo (former secretary-general of Civicus) and a coalition of leading civil society organisations from the aid, governance and access to information communities. The campaign is currently funded by Cafod, Christian Aid, ONE, OSI, Tiri[2], Wateraid, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and World Vision[3].

Publish What You Fund is one of the three CSO organisations represented on the Steering Committee of the International Aid Transparency Initiative, which is a vehicle for donors to deliver on the commitments in the Accra Agenda for Action. Publish What You Fund was set up with the aim of ensuring agreement and delivery upon a set of aid transparency standards; and with the Publish What You Fund principles having become part of the general aid information disclosure.

Activities

Publish What You Fund works alongside others advocating for transparency, both of aid [4] and in other areas[5]. The organisation’s primary advocacy targets are donors, who can change or prevent the availability of aid information at both the technical/civil service and political level. Advocacy efforts are currently focused on three main targets: International Aid Transparency Initiative, the United States of America and the European Union.

The Aid Transparency Solution

  1. Country-specific information about the aid to a particular country/area (e.g. primary health care in district of Uganda by from an agency).
  2. Comprehensiveness, covering all the aid given, both in terms of breadth (all the different types of foreign assistance – development, humanitarian, post conflict, security etc) and depth (detailed enough for others to be able plan on the basis of that information).
  3. Budget compatibility – aid information presented in-line with recipient-country budget cycle (planning, evaluation etc), and particularly in terms of the recipient budget classifications to make information comparable both between donors and particularly with the recipient’s spending patterns.
  4. "Traceability" of aid – capturing the re-granting/subcontracting of aid flows
  5. Terms of aid - include information on conditions, terms, sub-contractors, etc – not just financial information.
  6. Timely – that information is current (not 2 years later like the OECD DAC numbers).
  7. Medium-term forward plans – future aid activities planned and estimates of spending that allow for medium term, 3-5 year, planning.

Principles

Publish What You Fund was founded with four key principles:

  1. Information on aid should be published proactively – an organisation should tell people what they are doing, when and how.
  2. Information on aid should be timely, accessible and comparable - the information provided should be in a format that is useful.
  3. Everyone has the right to request and receive information about aid - ensure everyone is able to access the information as and when they wish
  4. The right of access to information about aid should be promoted - an organisation should actively promote the fact that people have this right.

References

  1. ^ http://www.oecd.org/document/20/0,3343,en_2649_3236398_41201108_1_1_1_1,00.html
  2. ^ http://www.tiri.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=
  3. ^ http://www.publishwhatyoufund.org/resources/about-us/finances/
  4. ^ EU Aidwatch Report 2009
  5. ^ The Open Knowledge Foundation

External links

Further reading

See also