Japan is among a host of major donors falling short on aid transparency, according to Publish What You Fund's annual index. Photograph: How Hwee Young/EPA
Dozens of major aid donors are failing to deliver on commitments to open their books and be more transparent about where and how they spend foreign aid money, according to an index published by the campaign group Publish What You Fund.
French and Japanese government agencies are among more than 40 donor organisations that receive overall "poor" or "very poor" scores in the latest aid transparency index, published on Thursday.
Italy, Spain, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also feature among the index's worst performers.
The UK's Department for International Development (DfID), which topped the index in 2012, is in third place this year. Pole position instead goes to the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a US agency that takes the top slot for the first time. Britain's Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence, which also spend UK aid money, received overall "poor" and "very poor" scores respectively.
David Hall-Matthews, director of Publish What You Fund, said that while open data and transparency have become "fashionable watchwords", too many donors are failing to fulfil their promises.
"No matter how many international promises are made, no matter how many speeches there are around openness, a startling amount of organisations are still not delivering on their aid transparency goals," he said.
Hall-Matthews added that this year's index, which scores, ranks and categorises 67 donor organisations on the aid information they publish, shows a "very polarised picture, with great data at the very top and a long tail of agencies publishing poor, bad quality information … there's definitely a lot of catching up to do".
For the first time, the index measures not only the quantity but also the quality of information published by aid donors. Unlike previous years, it awards more points to agencies publishing information in formats that are easy to access, analyse and reuse – and penalises those releasing data in formats such as pdfs, or on websites that are difficult to navigate.
Publish What You Fund argues that more open and transparent information about aid is necessary to ensure effective and accountable spending. The campaign for aid transparency, now in its fifth year, is part of a broader global movement for more transparent and open government.
The MCC is ranked first in this year's index with an overall score of 89% – more than double the average score. The MCC is a specialised aid agency that gives large-scale grants to countries it deems committed to good governance and "economic freedom".
Besides the MCC, only three other donor organisations – Gavi, DfID, and the UN development programme – received overall scores of between 80% and 100%, earning them slots in the index's "very good" category.
The average score for all organisations in the index is low (32.6%), with 25 organisations – more than a third of the total – scoring less than 20%. This means most aid information is still not published in a timely, standardised way, and reflects the fact that too much of the information released remains patchy.
China ranks last in the index, with a score of 2.2%.
In recent years, many donors have made commitments and high-profile pledges to be more open and transparent with their aid budgets. A total of 33 donors – accounting for more than 85% of official development finance – have signed up to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).
The US, Germany, three European commission departments, a raft of UN agencies and two regional development banks started publishing in the IATI standard data format for the first time this year.
While aid transparency advocates are quick to applaud these developments, the problem, say analysts, is that commitments are often implemented in the weakest form possible. Some information published to IATI, for example, is simply old data converted to the new format. Information that could add value – such as more precise location details, budget documents, conditions, and results data – is too rarely published.
It isn't completely surprising that so many agencies do badly, according to Hall-Mathews. "Look at the hundreds of international agreements that get signed and then ignored," he says.
Hall-Matthews insists, however, that monitoring donor activity and holding agencies to account for their promises means they won't be able to forget them. "We have no doubt that this index has made people pay more attention," he says.
The 2013 index scores 67 donors on 39 indicators, looking at their overall commitment to aid transparency and the availability and accessibility of the information they publish. Because of the changes to the methdology, absolute scores are not directly comparable between years.
The index comes ahead of the Open Government Partnership's (OGP) annual summit in London next week. The OGP, which the UK chairs this year, is an international effort to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.
Reacting to the index, UK development secretary Justine Greening said: "The Aid Transparency Index demonstrates the UK's continued lead in this area by publishing good quality, accessible data. We will continue to help and encourage others to do the same."
