UK’s development reviews renew commitment to IATI

  • Dec. 1, 2016

The UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) has strongly reinforced its commitment to IATI in its 2016 bilateral and multilateral development reviews, published today.

Rising to the challenge of ending poverty: the Bilateral Development Review 2016

DFID’s Bilateral Development Review 2016 welcomes the improvement in transparency shown by the increase in IATI publishers (to nearly 500 today). However the report says there are still “too many organisations which either do not publish or need to improve the quality of their data”. DFID will continue to improve the quality of its own IATI data, as well as expecting other UK departments to do the same.

DFID already requires its implementing partners to publish to IATI and this review sets out the vision of achieving traceability throughout the system “so that anyone, anywhere can trace funding, all the way from the taxpayer to the beneficiary”. The reports says DFID will announce detailed plans for this in due course.

Raising the Standard: the Multilateral Development Review 2016

In the Multilateral Development Review 2016, organisations’ commitment to global aid transparency standards forms part of DFID’s assessment methodology. The report states that agencies are taking transparency more seriously, “with much more data now published in an accessible way, based on the standards of IATI”. DFID praised IATI Secretariat member, UNDP’s record saying they “have gone beyond the basic requirements and are demonstrating a culture of transparency across their operation”.

The multilateral development review sets out DFID’s expectation for all its multilateral partners to “meet IATI standards as a minimum”. Most agencies in the review are already IATI publishers, with three more committing to IATI by the end of 2016. The review however states that 10 agencies remain uncommitted.

DFID also says it will drive the implementation of the World Humanitarian Summit Grand Bargain agreement on reforming the humanitarian system. This included a commitment by global actors to publish their humanitarian financing to IATI within two years.

Read full reports: Rising to the challenge of ending poverty: the Bilateral Development Review 2016 and Raising the Standard: the Multilateral Development Review 2016.