Mark Brough, Publish What You Fundmark.brough@publishwhatyoufund.org

@mark_brough

Open Resource Flows for DevelopmentGeneva, 16 September 2013

IntroductionVery brief outline of basic terms around open data, resource flows, initiatives, and explanation ofagenda.

See presentation

Presentations by various organisationsPublish What You Fund

● Main work is campaign to increase transparency of aid, particularly through IATI● Overlaps are with budgets, where we built a visualisation of all aid to Uganda mapped onto

Uganda’s budget. Plans to repeat this with up-to-date budget (probably from Tanzania) andaid data from IATI.

● Beginning to think about what we should be doing in terms of use of data and how that fitsinto our existing mandate around advocacy for more and better data.

See above presentation for slides accompanying this.

Adaptation Fund● A majority of AF board members are from developing countries● Some AF funds come from public sector budgets; others come from new / innovative

financing mechanisms such as CERs (certified emission reductions), part-funded by the EUEmissions Trading Scheme

● Interesting overlap with traditional aid – some climate finance flows are very similar totraditional ODA; others are quite different.

PublicSpending.net

● company name reconciliation● transformation/unification of payment categories● Linked Data provision through SPARQL endpoint for 1,6 trillion euros of public spending

around the world (e.g. UK, USA, Australia, Greece, states of Alaska, Mass., city of Chicago)● Follow Public Money all the Way (FPM) Vocabulary: a compact and minimal way to model the

flows of public money

World Bank Institute● Private sector transparency● BOOST – domestic spending data● Open Contracting

○ Revenue side○ Service delivery○ Infrastructure

UNOCHA● Track reported humanitarian aid; published in XML and JSON● Recently published to IATI format; included new extension for humanitarian classifications● Collect standard reference data; beginning to pull and share together internally

Publish What You Pay● Focus on extractives● EITI, Dodd-Frank and EC legislation

Mark Brough, Publish What You Fundmark.brough@publishwhatyoufund.org

@mark_brough

● Interested in payment data and spending data, and particularly Open Contracting

Development Initiatives● Starting to work with other organisations re open data and development● Investments to End Poverty Report will be launched next week, and tries to untangle resource

flows from each other● Four particular areas of focus:

1. Outreach and extending IATI to non-traditional aid flows2. Joined up data / interoperability work3. Practical proof of concept work, including manually mapping all resource flows in several

districts in Uganda4. Open Resource Toolkit

Development Finance International● Work with 40 low and middle income countries to map budgeted spend in 8 sectors which

were relevant to MDG targets (including recurrent and capital; donor and revenue)● Worked with Oxfam to develop dataset which will be useful for advocacy● Beginning to work with UN Women to look at how to improve identification of gender

sensitivity in budgets; and Save the Children to look at child sensitivity of spend

Stephan Kasberger● Teaching a course that uses a network perspective to look at rare earth elements (including

extraction – chemistry/physics-focused; modelling of rare earth elements; and trading ofcommodities)

● Want to get better data on trade in rare earth elements● Building on EITI could perhaps help deliver this

Reinier Battenberg● Working to make a Drupal-based easily-deployable IATI publication instance in Uganda● DevTrac Uganda (working with UNICEF) shows locations of projects, schools, hospitals, etc.

UNDP – Mark Cardwell● Working to improve UNDP’s own data publication, particularly in IATI● Also working to help open up the UN● Recently began hosting the IATI Secretariat with Sweden, Ghana, UNOPS, Development

Initiatives

Michael Lenczner, Ajah● Canada – tracking lots of spending data● Large amount of data on companies and charities● Interested in how to apply something like IATI to domestic spending data

Integrity Action – Dimitri Katz● Community monitoring initiatives in postwar states● Including GrantCheck and Development Check – feedback mechanisms both for donor and

government projects● Interested in standards for publishing data

Sam Lee, World Bank Finances● Publishing financial data on WB Finances website● Exploring demand for open data; see research published on finances.worldbank.org

Plan USA● Beginning IATI publication; also trying to encourage the rest of the US NGO sector● Interested in how to capture and represent donations by private individuals; this is not

Mark Brough, Publish What You Fundmark.brough@publishwhatyoufund.org

@mark_brough

currently captured in IATI● Also interested in closing the gap e.g. integrating citizen feedback into aid programming

processes. Infomediaries and intermediaries are also important.

OpenSpending● Moldova – visualising budget (from BOOST) and spending data and working out how to present

the information in an engaging way● Brazil – visualising actual v approved expenditure and showing distinctions

Challenges and opportunitiesWhat we can already see from existing data(Assuming unlimited developer time)

● Integrate aid and budgets○ Are donor priorities aligning with domestic country’s priorities?○ Fungibility – both movement of aid flows around, and also change in government

budget in response to changes in aid○ Participation from citizens – have basic information on projects, which would make it

theoretically possible to complain about what’s happening or how resources areallocated

○ Geographic concentrations of aid (given geocoded data) or government spending (ifregional breakdown in budgets) which could show you whether there’s a bigconcentration in certain regions above what you’d expect given their needs (possiblycompare with household survey data of poverty incidence) or in certain constituencies

● Aid flows before elections – do they help people get elected?● History behind aid flows; geopolitical forces etc● Extractives

○ Costs – can you see what different companies are doing – is the amount companiespay governments likely to correspond to the price they pay for resource extraction?

○ Who extracts – public sector extractors / parastatals (look at budget; they’re often,but not always, included there)

○ How much of natural resources revenues is going into education for example?● Compare budget data with UN/NGO data

○ Given certain needs, how are different organisations prioritising their spend?● “Bribe market theory” – idea that if you publish bribes, you drive prices down. Does

publishing data about what resources cost improve the deal that governments get?● Still needed

○ Revenue side of budgets – increasing amounts of information on spending, butrevenue still needed

○ Intermediaries and channels to get data down to citizens. NB there are biases withincivil society and intermediaries; need to have a plurality of intermediaries rather thanjust one. Need a wider increase in data literacy?

● Need to understand what you’re looking at in the data – what should you expect to see in thedata and not? (i.e. need for assessment tools)

What we need to solve● Need user stories to work out what tools need to be built

○ E.g. extractives payment made due to a contract: what does that contract say, canyou see that a payment was paid to a particular company that might have particularrelations with other companies?

● A significant barrier is stubbornness – no interest to translate taxonomies (idea that“ontologies” are a way to solve the problem – link up one level to something else that’scommonly discussed)

Mark Brough, Publish What You Fundmark.brough@publishwhatyoufund.org

@mark_brough

● Bottom-up creation of classifications/taxonomies is also possible: e.g. done by civil societyorganisations for spending data in Japanese cities

● Format data is provided in / standards○ Well-formatted CSVs could be a simple way to publish data○ However does it really matter to low-tech users how the data is formatted – if you

have good tools to create / use the data then you can submit data in a form (takingIATI data creation tools as an example)

What initiatives / institutions can we work through to implement this● How do we talk about getting to interconnected data; do we have to deconstruct resource

flow silos and then reconstruct them?● Feasibility of applying international standards to budgets where the classifications etc. are

owned by local governments?● Need to map different initiatives together, and overlapping issues

○ E.g. geography, organisation IDs, etc.● Mapping criteria

○ Function (tendering / contracting / spending); metadata analysis● Each of the three functions – how close to 5-star open data are they?● Underlying communities have different practices; how would you find ways to get these

organisations to dance the same way (or believe that they do dance in the same way)

Participants● Simon Parrish <Simon.Parrish AT devinit.org>● Bill Anderson <Bill.Anderson AT devinit.org>● Sam Lee <slee23 AT worldbank.org>● Lucy Chambers <lucy.chambers AT okfn.org>● Martin Marc-Antoine (Adaptation Fund Board Member) <martinma AT dbmail.com>● Claire Provost <claire.provost AT theguardian.com>● Felipe Estefan <festefan AT worldbank.org>● Chris Taggart <chris.taggart AT opencorporates.com>● Seb Bacon (Open Corporates) <seb.bacon AT gmail.com>● Richard Watts <rjwatts AT development-finance.org>● Sean Foo <foos AT un.org>● Miriam Lange <lange1 AT un.org>● Alexander Kellogg Miller <miller4 AT un.org>● Shreya Basu <shreya.basu AT publishwhatyoufund.org>● Michalis Vafopoulos (National Technical University of Athens) <vafopoulos AT gmail.com>● Stefan Kasberger <me AT stefankasberger.at>● Dimitri Katz <dimitri.katz AT integrityaction.org>● Tom Salmon <tomsalmon AT yahoo.com>● Marcio Vasconcelos <marcio.vasconcelos AT avina.net>● Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock AT okfn.org>● Anders Pedersen <anders.pedersen AT okfn.org>● Michael Lenczner <michael AT ajah.ca>● Victoria Vlad <victoriavlad AT expert-grup.org>● Linda Raftree <linda.raftree AT planusa.org>● Joseph Williams <jwilliams AT publishwhatyoupay.org>● Christophe Guéret <christophe.gueret AT dans.knaw.nl>● Vanessa Herringshaw <Vanessa.Herringshaw AT transparency-initiative.org>● Mark Cardwell <mark.cardwell AT undp.org>● Janet Haven <Janet.Haven AT opensocietyfoundations.org>