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U.S. Foreign Assistance Dashboard: Show Me the Data!
November 22, 2011
Yesterday, I was happy to see the MCC finally publish aid data to the Foreign Assistance Dashboard, the government’s one-stop-shop for foreign assistance budget and appropriations information. But upon further examination of the website, I couldn’t help but feel a little cheated when I noticed the dearth of new data available in the tool. Nearly a year has passed since the Dashboard was launched in December 2010, and the U.S. government has yet to come up with the majority of its promised haul of agency data.
Rolled out a day after the QDDR, Dashboard was a response to calls for greater transparency and accountability in government and development agencies. It aims to incorporate all U.S. government foreign assistance budget planning, financial program, and performance data in an easily accessible web format, allowing users to track, analyze, and monitor aid investments overtime. The website’s user-friendly graphics allow viewers to peruse through data displayed by country, sector, and year and generate their own tables through manual queries as well as download machine-readable data sets. Inspired by principles embraced in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, the Accra Agenda for Action, and President Obama’s Open Government Initiative, the Dashboard was widely heralded as an important step toward establishing a new system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration for monitoring U.S. foreign assistance.
Based on what it sets out to provide, the website is an impressively ambitious tool, and the government should be applauded for moving quickly to get in line with international standards on aid transparency (see IATI). Nevertheless, the tool is only as useful as the information it stores, and currently, it stores very little. Sure it includes both State and USAID foreign assistance request and appropriations data, but this information was made available at the original release of the Dashboard nearly a year ago, and both agencies have yet to publish data for obligations and spent resources. The recent release of MCC information is certainly a plus, but since that information was already readily available on the MCC’s website, it hardly counts as progress.
So what doesn’t the Dashboard include? Take a look at the matrix below, provided on the Dashboard’s “What’s Coming” section of the website. X’s indicate data that is publically available on the site.
This is the short list of the 20+ agencies which the government intends to include data on in the complete version of Dashboard. The addition of other agencies and more detailed data is to be released in phases over time, but over how much time is the question. Principle 3 of 7[1] listed as a core principle guiding the Dashboard calls for data to be “published with the level of detail, quality, and speed needed to enhance government development planning and empower citizens to hold their government accountable.” But how much time constitutes the “speed” necessary to empower citizens? I’d say less than 12 months.
The Dashboard has the mandate to be a powerful conveyor of information, a tool to help ensure programs and agencies are more accountable to Congress and the American public. It has the potential to provide key stakeholders with the information they need to analyze aid expenditures, shut down ineffective programs, and focus resources in areas where assistance can be most effective. If updated with project information and performance data, it can help advocates push the government to remarry evidence to resource allocations and spending to successful programs.
Before its birthday on December 16th, let’s see the government fulfill its promises and make more data available on the Dashboard.
What else would you like included in the Dashboard? As always, the Rethink team is eager to hear your suggestions on how to make this tool even more effective. Please feel free to add your comments below.
[1] Another area for concern is principle 7 which calls for the government to institutionalize a process that facilitates the collection and dissemination of data on foreign assistance across agencies. There is no mention on the Dashboard of any progress on creating such a process.
Possibly Related Posts
- New Foreign Assistance Legislation Promotes Transparency and Accountability
- Why Reforming U.S. Foreign Assistance Is More Important than Ever
- QuODA and the State of U.S. Assistance
4 Responses to “U.S. Foreign Assistance Dashboard: Show Me the Data!”
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November 22nd, 2011 at 11:06 pm
I asked Admin Shah about the progress of the Dashboard in September making the same points that you did. He evaded to some extent saying that the information is up there. I too am interested in seeing if this will progress.
November 23rd, 2011 at 3:56 pm
First a quick correction: the MCC did not publish those data; they are collected and published by the F Bureau. Futhermore, there is *one* person who manages the Dashboard, and it is but one task among a full docket of other responsibilities.
Not only has this not been prioritized in terms of staffing, but it is also an exceedingly difficult task (thus compounding the lack of attention). You try collecting data from all the relevant USG agencies – there are 26 and many are unwilling to cooperate or couldn’t be bothered – and see how far you get in a year.
In addition, some agencies have widely differing data systems and methods of accounting for their funds or they don’t account for it at all, which means going through accounts line by line. It’s a logistical nightmare that would take an entire team a year or more to complete, let alone less than one FTE.
So that leaves the question of who is responsible for this failure in providing transparency and accountability for promises made. Personally, I think it falls on the Administrator (plz don’t fire me kthx) who has been promising this for over a year now, and whoever is making the decision to under-staff this initiative at State/F.
Hopefully there will be a re-commitment to transparency coming out of Busan, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for a huge breakthrough there or for all of the data – or any more for that matter – to be published by December 16th.
Finally, if there was more of an effort to communicate progress, or at least the difficulties of implementing such an ambitious transparency initiative, there might not be as many questions swirling about the ostensible lack of follow-through (such as this very blog post). Until that is conveyed, I think CGD and others should keep asking these important questions about the severe lack of progress.
November 28th, 2011 at 6:20 pm
[...] investments. Still, as Will McKitterick of the Center for Global Development points out in a new blog post, the MCC data was already available on the agency’s website. McKitterick [...]
December 8th, 2011 at 10:39 pm
As a third world country activist, I appreciate Will McKitterick’s analysis of the USG’s transparency efforts in Aid Effectiveness. His expectations from the USG regarding the publications of data in the dashboard with all details reveals the people’s right to information and any democratic government should be responsible for this. In India, only recent years, the Government has been implementing the ‘right to information’ act and many development activists are obtaining information after a long process. As a leading democracy in the world, USG should give importance to the principles of Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, the Accra Agenda for Action and President Obama’s Open Government Initiative by openly publishing the required data in the Dashboard and become a model to other countries in transparency and accountability.