How transparent are aid agencies to their citizens? Introducing the Citizen Aid Transparency Dataset

In: Journal of international development: the journal of the Development Studies Association, Volume 35, Issue 7, p. 2177-2212

Open Access

Abstract

AbstractExisting measures of aid transparency overwhelmingly focus on how much information donor agencies are willing to share with the international donor community, overlooking that transparency is about increasing citizens' access to information in order to improve government accountability. In this article, we present the Citizen Aid Transparency Dataset (CATD). Using factor and correlation analysis, we show that the CATD captures a different dimension of transparency than existing transparency measures. We also show that aid agency transparency varies both within and between donor countries and that there are important quality differences between agencies in the timeliness, breadth, depth and accessibility of the data provided.