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Beyond Busan

A Report on Canada’s Progress Toward More Transparent Foreign Aid

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Report Summary

A Message from EWB

Introduction

Canada’s Road to IATI

What’s Next: Moving from Words to Action

Update: Engineers Without Borders Canada and IATI

Nothing worth doing is easy: Challenges to IATI implementation

The Road Ahead: Canada’s Role in Shaping the Future of Global Aid Transparency

Conclusion

Additional Resources

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Contents

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Report SummaryIn November 2011, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) signed on to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).

The international aid transparency community has welcomed this and other steps that Canada has taken toward more transparent aid. However, most are reserving further comment until Canada provides more detail about its strategy to follow through with these commitments. This will likely come in the form of CIDA’s IATI implementation schedule, which is scheduled for release in December 2012.

This report begins by outlining the history of aid transparency in Canada

and abroad. Next, it provides an overview of where CIDA and Engineers Without Borders Canada (EWB) currently are in their implementations of the IATI standard.

Then, it explores several challenges to IATI implementation—and to the broader evolution of the aid transparency movement as a whole—that Canada, EWB, and others have encountered since committing to more transparent aid.

The report concludes by illustrating the opportunity and responsibility that Canada has to take a leadership role in addressing the challenges to IATI implementation and helping to shape the future of global aid transparency.

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A Message from EWBAt Engineers Without Borders Canada (EWB), we have always believed that how aid dollars are spent is just as important as how much money is given.

This is precisely why strengthening aid transparency is so critical: by being more honest about our successes and failures, we’re able to improve the effectiveness of aid and help accelerate global development.

Over the past two and a half years, EWB has worked to inform and engage Canadians about the importance of transparent aid. As a result of our efforts, over 25,000 Canadians from coast to coast called on the Government of Canada to join the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). Since we also believe it’s vital to walk the walk, last year EWB became the second non-governmental organization in the world to commit to, and begin publishing in compliance with, the IATI standard.

On November 28, 2011, the hard work and perseverance of thousands of Canadian citizens was significantly strengthened when Canada announced we would join other leading donors and sign on to IATI.

But aid transparency alone is not the solution.

The international economic crisis has led to a de-prioritization of efforts to reduce global poverty. In the 2012 Federal Budget, Canada announced it was reducing the international development assistance budget by $780 million over the next three years. In this time of fiscal restraint and uncertainty, how we spend our aid dollars truly matters more than ever.

Minister of International Cooperation Julian Fantino has said that he intends to put emphasis on “making sure every nickel we [CIDA] spend... is accounted for, and that we are receiving the most significant outcomes possible.” EWB looks forward to seeing Canada set the pace in demonstrating this, by following through on CIDA’s aid transparency commitments and continuing to lead the effort to make aid more effective.

James Haga Director of Advocacy, Engineers Without Borders Canada

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IntroductionOn November 28, 2011, at the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4) in Busan, South Korea, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) officially became the 23rd signatory to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).

IATI aims to improve aid effectiveness by making information about aid flows and activities easier to access and understand for all stakeholders, particularly those in developing countries. IATI facilitates this by requiring its members to publish their foreign aid data consistently and publicly, using one detailed and comparable format: the IATI standard.

CIDA’s decision to sign on to IATI was made as part of the Government of Canada’s broader Open Government agenda, which saw Canada place significant emphasis on improving government transparency throughout 2011. As part of this focus, CIDA launched an Open Data portal in March 2011. Since CIDA was already publicly publishing its project data, signing on to IATI seems a logical next step.

But it is not the final step.

CIDA’s commitment to IATI is an incredible move toward aid transparency and accountability in Canada, and the aid sector as a whole. But there is still much to do.

IATI provides the framework and incentive for donors and implementing organizations to publicly release information on how foreign aid dollars are spent. However, data alone is not enough to make transparency and accountability—and ultimately, more effective aid—a reality.

So, the question becomes: what next?

It has now been over six months since Canada signed on to IATI. What’s happened since? Has joining IATI sparked tangible reform, or simply quieted dissent? What does Canada need to do to continue improving the effectiveness of the aid we support?

This report provides an overview of the progress Canada has made toward increasing the transparency and accountability of our foreign aid, and sets the stage for the next steps our country needs to take in order to ensure that increased transparency leads to improved development results.

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Canada’s Road to IATI

2012

2011 February

During Canada’s 41st federal election campaign, EWB engages 95% of all candidates, asking that each include support for Canada signing on to IATI in their party’s platform.

April 12

The Honourable Tony Clement releases Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government. This document sets out a three-year plan for the implementation of IATI, which is:

• Year1: review all IATI requirements and publish our plan to make CIDA data available and accessible

• Years2and3: implementation and reporting.

March 17

Minister Stockwell Day, President of the Treasury Board and Minister for the Asia-Pacific Gateway, announces the launch of a year-long, country-wide pilot of Canada’s Open Government Initiative.

The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) launches its Open Data portal, which makes project-level statistics and information on international aid activities available to the public.

April 18

Following a meeting between EWB and The Globe and Mail’s editorial board, the editorial in today’s paper states that “Canada must join the International Aid Transparency Initiative”.

April 20

Canada announces its support for the Open Aid Partnership and commits to providing $1 million to the initiative over the next three years, making CIDA the largest partner donor to date.

September 20

The Government of Canada officially announces its intent to join the Open Government Partnership, a multiyear, multilateral government transparency initiative led by the United States and Brazil.

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2008 September

The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) is launched in Accra, Ghana. IATI is a voluntary, multi-stakeholder initiative that aims to make aid more effective by establishing a common, open, international standard for publishing more, and better, information about aid.

June 14: Day of Action

on Parliament HillFollowing a meeting between EWB and The Globe and Mail’s editorial board, the editorial in today’s paper states that “Canada must join the International Aid Transparency Initiative”.

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September 20

The Government of Canada officially announces its intent to join the Open Government Partnership, a multiyear, multilateral government transparency initiative led by the United States and Brazil.

October 30

EWB presents to the Parliamentary Finance Committee on IATI as part of the government’s 2012 Federal Budget consultations.

November 11

EWB becomes the second NGO in the world to publish its aid data to the IATI standard.

November 28

At the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, South Korea, the Government of Canada announces we will sign on to IATI.

At the time of writing...

IATI has 31 signatories

October

EWB becomes the first beta tester for the Open Aid Register

June

EWB launches the Accountability, Creativity, Transparency (ACT) Campaign, which marks the beginning of our work on aid transparency.

Ongoing: until 2011

EWB meets with 140+ MPs, Canada-wide, to raise their awareness about the impor-tance of aid transparency and recommend practical policy solutions.

September

The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) is launched in Accra, Ghana. IATI is a voluntary, multi-stakeholder initiative that aims to make aid more effective by establishing a common, open, international standard for publishing more, and better, information about aid.

June 14: Day of Action

on Parliament HillFollowing a meeting between EWB and The Globe and Mail’s editorial board, the editorial in today’s paper states that “Canada must join the International Aid Transparency Initiative”.

October 18

EWB leads a 24-hour blitz, during which over 10,000 Canadians online and at events in 18 cities across the country ask their MPs and the Government of Canada to sign on to IATI.

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What’s Next: Moving from Words to ActionAfter an organization becomes an IATI member, its next task is to create an implementation schedule that outlines how and when its data will be published to the IATI standard.

CIDA is set to release its IATI implementation schedule in December 2012.

Until then, the information we have about CIDA’s planned approach is limited to the brief overview provided in the Government of Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government. Here, we learn that CIDA has set a three-year timeframe for IATI implementation. 2012 is dedicated to reviewing the IATI requirements and developing an implementation schedule. 2013 and 2014 will then be focused on implementing that schedule.

Representatives of the aid transparency community express a considerable respect for Canada’s approach to IATI

thus far. The sentiment seems to be that, although CIDA was not an early adopter, when the organization did commit to IATI it was with a great deal of thoughtfulness.

Isabel Bucknell, member of the IATI Technical Advisory Group and Program Advisor at AidInfo, admits that Canada’s three-year timeframe could be shorter from an AidInfo perspective. However, she appreciates the effort that Canada is making to understand the depth of the IATI standard and its requirements, saying “we [at IATI] are very impressed with CIDA’s attention to detail… we would love organizations to be ambitious, but if they’re making sure it [IATI] becomes an effective process, that’s almost more important than trying to do it within a week.”

That said, most parties are waiting to see CIDA’s implementation schedule before making further judgments about Canada’s commitment to IATI.

2012

2013 & 2014

December

CIDA is set to release its IATI implementation schedule.

CIDA focused on executing its IATI implementation schedule.

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Update: Engineers Without Borders and IATI

In November 2011, Engineers Without Borders Canada (EWB) became the second non-governmental organization (NGO) in the world to publish its data to the IATI standard.

Since then, we have been equipping ourselves to be fully compliant with IATI standards. The first step in our implementation plan was to run a pilot with our Water and Sanitation (WatSan) team in Malawi. The key pieces of knowledge we hope to gain from this pilot are:

1. How to identify and create the organizational and technical systems needed to support effective implementation of the IATI standard;

2. What is needed to cultivate a strong buy-in to IATI and the accompanying data collection processes within a field-based team; and

3. An assessment and strategy to improve the National Office’s capacity to manage the implementation and organizational change processes.

In this way, the WatSan pilot is central to helping us develop a strong base of experience, which

will be integral to our ability to support the implementation of the IATI standard by the remainder of our African teams.

The WatSan team has already published to a base level of IATI compliance. By mid-summer 2012, we expect the WatSan pilot to be at a high level of IATI compliance. At that time, we will finalize our strategy to expand IATI compliance across all of our African teams. Our goal is to have all of our African teams reach at least a base level of IATI compliance by October 2012.

EWB is also developing IATI-compliant systems for our National Office Administration team and preparing to make relevant changes to our accounting systems, in order to facilitate EWB’s long-term compliance with the IATI standard.

Institutionalizing IATI compliance hasn’t been easy for EWB. It’s a massive undertaking that requires a substantial investment of time and resources, and significant organizational change to do properly and sustainably.

But we believe it’s worth the effort, because we believe in the value of truly transparent aid.

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Nothing Worth Doing Is Easy: Challenges to IATI ImplementationThe emphasis on awaiting CIDA’s implementation schedule seems borne from a widespread acknowledgement that there are significantchallengesthatcomewiththepracticalapplicationoftheIATIstandard. There are three key hurdles that have been noted:

In addition to these challenges accompanying IATI implementation, there are two broaderissues that IATI and the aid transparency movements are currently turning their attention toward:

The complexity of institutionalizing the collection and dissemination of data.It’s no simple task to create and implement the processes to collect, manage, and publish data to the IATI standard. Complex organizational changes need to happen at a variety of levels, which can be a particular challenge for large and geographically dispersed institutions.

As a result, implementation strategies vary widely across current IATI signatories. Some have chosen to publish partial data very quickly, focusing on rapidly publishing their available data to the IATI standard now, and working to improve quality

At the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4), a commitment was made to develop an internationally accepted standard for publishing aid data: the Busan Standard. While this standard is generally held to be one and the same as the IATI standard, this has yet to be made official. As a result, the

item at the top of IATI’s agenda for this year is negotiating with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) to have the IATI standard officially become the Busan Standard. IATI aims to have this agreement solidified by fall 2012.

and processes later. Others, like CIDA, have delayed immediate publishing and opted to take more time with the initial planning stages, in an effort to engrain the entire process in the fabric of their institution from the get-go.

It’s too early to tell which approach will prove most effective in the long term, since no signatory has yet published to the full breadth and depth required by the IATI standard. But if there’s one thing all stakeholders agree upon, it’s that implementing IATI completely and effectively won’t happen overnight.

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1 Officially establishing IATI as the Busan Standard.

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In order to provide a truly accurate picture of the complexity of aid funding flows, IATI needs to be adopted throughout the full breadth and depth of the aid sector.

That means:

a) expanding beyond official bilateral and multilateral donors, which currently make up the majority of IATI signatories, to include civil society, non-governmental, and private sector stakeholders, and

b) significantly increasing the participation of stakeholders based in recipient countries.

is looking to signatories and supporters to help each other with implementation. Bucknell believes that this approach will be more effective in the long run. “A centralized support model is never going to be successful in maintaining such a large community,” she says. “Right now, we’re trying to understand what [our support model] is going to look like.”

One idea currently being explored is a certification system that would create a pool of official IATI implementation support organizations. However, no concrete plans are currently in place and it remains to be seen who will fill this gap, and how.

The need to change ideas about when data is ‘fit’ for publication.Adding another layer of difficulty to the required organizational changes are institutions’ existing notions about what kinds of data are suitable to be released to the public, and how questions about that data are to be addressed.

“The idea of publishing planning information, information that has not been audited or checked is… a real cultural shift for people,” says Bucknell. Since getting buy-in from staff is central to successful organizational change, this is a challenge that EWB, CIDA, and other IATI signatories need to consciously address within their broader implementation plans.

The lack of comprehensive implementation support systems.“The IATI Secretariat funding for this financial year is by no means secure,” says Andrew Clarke of Publish What You Fund. “This is very constraining for support and implementation.” IATI’s limited funding and small staff are becoming increasingly stretched with the rapid and continuing increase in signatories since the 2011 HLF4 in Busan.

Further, IATI currently sees itself more as a facilitator when it comes to implementation. As a result, while IATI is in the process of developing a tool to measure the quality of signatories’ compliance, creating these sorts of mechanisms is not its primary focus. Instead, the organization

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this will be the final push to get commitments DAC donors that have been reluctant to sign on to IATI.

Increasing the diversity of IATI signatories.

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The Road Ahead: Canada’s Role in Shaping the Future of Global Aid Transparency

CIDA is uniquely positioned to take a leadership role in addressing the challenges faced by IATI and its signatories. In so doing, Canada also has the opportunity to become an even more powerful voice for increased international aid effectiveness.

There are four key ways that Canada can demonstrate its leadership right now:

Actively support the adoption of IATI as the Busan Standard.

Lead by example with the production of high quality data.CIDA has expressed a strong commitment to producing high quality data, and we look forward to seeing more detail about how CIDA will approach this task in their implementation schedule.

It is also important that CIDA not focus solely on the quality of its own data, but also support other signatories in publishing similarly robust information. One way that CIDA can do this is by openly sharing experiences and lessons learned—both successes and failures—with the IATI community, so that stakeholders can learn, improve, and evolve together.

For instance, CIDA will be the first signatory to publish information in two languages. “We’re interested in learning from Canada how IATI can be implemented in multiple languages,” says Bucknell. “This is a new thing for us [the IATI Secretariat] and we could learn a lot from their implementation.”

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“The good thing about [OAP] is it’s a downstream part of the chain,” says Clarke, “IATI is about producing information, OAP is about applying it.”

As OAP matures, it is important for CIDA keep in mind that geo-mapping is not a ‘quick fix.’ OAP needs to be clearly defined in order to avoid overlap with other data application initiatives and the information behind the maps must also be robust in order for them to be useful.

Overall, CIDA’s involvement with OAP is a significant opportunity for Canada to distinguish itself both by making OAP a standout data application and communication tool, and by actively encouraging other actors to explore similarly creative applications of aid data.

Push other aid sector actors to adopt transparency commitments.In IATI meetings, CIDA has expressed support for expanding and improving the diversity of IATI signatories, and we are proud that Canada is being vocal about this gap. However, CIDA has the ability to do more than just draw attention to this issue. Particularly as a member of the Open Government Partnership, Canada has both the forum and the clout to champion the importance of transparency and accountability to increasing aid effectiveness.

As a result, Canada has a responsibility to take a leadership role in convincing other donors and ‘non-traditional’ (i.e. private sector) actors in the aid sector, particularly those from emerging economies, to sign on to IATI.

Support the clear and creative communication of IATI data.“Data is pretty useless on its own,” admits Bucknell. “There’s a risk that money goes into getting data out there, but the data just sits there because no one is funding ‘translation.’”

Canada is already taking a leadership role in the ‘translation’ of IATI data, as a partner of and largest external donor to the World Bank Institute’s Open Aid Partnership (OAP). Still in its early stages, OAP focuses on using geo-mapping software to create maps of IATI data. The goal is to make IATI data easier to understand, with a particular focus on communicating with recipient stakeholders at all levels, from government institutions to donor and recipient country citizens.

CIDA has been geo-mapping its data for some time, and as a result has considerable experience to share with OAP. Reaction to OAP’s ambitions and Canada’s involvement has been positive,

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this will be the final push to get commitments DAC donors that have been reluctant to sign on to IATI.

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Conclusion

Between the launch of EWB’s Accountability, Creativity, Transparency (ACT) Campaign in 2010 and the November 2011 announcement that CIDA had signed on to IATI, over 25,000 Canadians shared their voices in support of increasing the transparency and accountability of our country’s foreign aid.

Canada’s commitment to IATI was an incredibly important victory, but it will not automatically result in more effective aid.

Aid transparency can be a layer in a strong foundation that we build more effective aid upon, or it can be just a box we tick that means very little.

Our task is now to ensure this is a meaningful change.

It is our responsibility as Canadian citizens to hold CIDA accountable to its aid transparency commitments. EWB will continue to monitor Canada’s progress in implementing its new policies, in order to ensure that these lead to improvements in development practice and, ultimately, more effective aid.

“Transparency does not, by itself, make aid more accountable or services better. But it is a necessary condition for every part of the internationally agreed agenda for aid effectiveness.”

- Owen Barder, Senior Fellow and Director for Europe at the Center for Global Development

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Additional ResourcesAidInfohttp://www.aidinfo.org

CanadianInternationalDevelopmentAgency(CIDA),OpenDataPortalhttp://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/acdi-cida/ACDI-CIDA.nsf/eng/FRA-511112638-L57

Canada’s2012ActionPlanonOpenGovernmenthttp://open.gc.ca/open-ouvert/ap-patb-eng.asp

InternationalAidTransparencyInitiative(IATI)http://www.aidtransparency.net

PublishWhatYouFund’sAidTransparencyIndexhttp://www.publishwhatyoufund.org

WorldBankInitiative’sOpenAidPartnershiphttp://wbi.worldbank.org/wbi/open-aid-partnership

Forthcoming Publications to Look Out ForIATISecretariat’s1stAnnualReport(forthcoming,September2012)http://www.aidtransparency.net

CIDA’sIATIImplementationSchedule(forthcoming,December2012)http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca

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