Mind The Gaps

At every stage in humanitarian response, decisions are made about where, how and when to spend money. These decisions determine the type of organisations that are supported, the type of assistance that is delivered, the type of needs that are prioritised and, consequently, whether peoples’ needs are met.

Good information can help people to make informed choices. It can tell us how money is channelled through the system. And it can help gauge the efficiency and effectiveness of the response.

Tracking the humanitarian dollar through the system is hindered by the lack of a central repository of information and the absence of a feedback loop that enables the people affected by crises to say what they have received and when. Without this feedback or aggregated data on what commodities and services have been delivered, the effectiveness and efficiency of the humanitarian response is hard to measure.

We think that the data we report on and share provides a good basis to help understand flows of humanitarian aid – but we know that it only captures part of the picture.

In February 2011, a multi-stakeholder group of donors, aid recipient country governments and civil society organisations (CSOs) agreed on a final International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) standard for the publication of information about aid. While initial publishers are mainly focused on development aid, IATI is intended to encompass all resource flows and the IATI standard was agreed in a way that ensures it can be used by a variety of donors and aid organisations, including those working in humanitarian contexts.

With an agreement on what data items to publish, and a common format for the data, IATI is now working with participating donors, philanthropic foundations and CSOs to start publishing data that is compliant with the agreed standard. Three organisations (the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), the Hewlett Foundation and the World Bank) have started publishing their aid data in a more comparable, timely and accessible format. A further six organisations have committed to do so before the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in November 2011. The first NGOs are expected to publish their data between June and August 2011. It is hoped that this coverage will provide a more comprehensive picture of aid and other resource flows to recipient countries. IATI has also held initial conversations with humanitarian organisations to understand how the standard could best be utilised in the humanitarian sector.