AidData: Tracking Development Finance
Researchers:
- Brad Parks
- Michael Tierney
- Robert Hicks
- J. Timmons Roberts
- Daniel Nielson
- Michael Findley
- Darren Hawkins
- Sven Wilson
Partners:
Themes:
Aid Allocation, Aid Effectiveness, Mapping for Results, Geocoding, Crowd-sourcing, Data Visualization
AidData Home
Project-Level Aid and AidData
Project-Level Aid (PLAID) and AidData are joint initiatives of the College of William and Mary, Brigham Young University, and Development Gateway to capture the universe of development finance. The project was started in 2003 when researchers at William and Mary and BYU found that traditional sources of data on aid flows were not sufficient to accurately analyze aid allocation patterns or assess aid effectiveness. To address the gaps in data on official development, PLAID has worked for the last six years to systematically collect, standardize, and publish all development finance data at the project-level. In December 2009, PLAID merged with Development Gateway's AiDA project to form a new entity: AidData.
AidData: The future of PLAID
The PLAID team has recently joined forces with Development Gateway to form a new initiative called AidData. Building on the strengths of both organizations, AidData has built the most comprehensive database on development information in the world, which will be launched in March 2010. The new partnership will continue to provide development practitioners, researchers, country governments, and individuals interested in development finance with access to complete and high-quality information on aid activities worldwide through a shared online source. Beyond providing the core database, though, AidData will build a portal to combine all of the development finance information in the PLAID database as well as utilize innovative analytical tools developed at both institutions to provide users with an accurate and up-to-date picture of development information.
The AidData Portal: Transforming Access to Development Data
Over the next five years, AidData will build up the AidData portal through expanding the database to include previously unpublished data from both traditional and new donors. Providing accessible aid information alone is not enough to ensure improved outcomes in development though-users also need relevant tools so they can use development data to make aid more effective. AidData therefore will also focus on improving the way these data are used by policymakers, NGOs, foundations, partner country officials, researchers, private funds and the public through developing dynamic applications and tools. Through these data and tools, AidData will dramatically improve aid transparency through fundamentally changing how foreign aid is understood, allocated and used. The portal will include the following components:
- Data: The AidData portal will feature the most comprehensive database on development finance in the world. To date, the database has over 900,000 projects worth $4 trillion.
- Coordination tools: As more public, private, and not-for-profit agencies offer development assistance internationally, the aid universe is becoming more fragmented. AidData will include Web 2.0 and social networking tools so individuals can contact other development stakeholders to facilitate coordination. The portal will also provide detailed information on projects going on in recipient countries from many different donors, so development practitioners and recipient governments can better track the local development projects and identify underserved areas.
- Information sharing tools: Development stakeholders need ways to share information on specific projects with potential partners as well as the larger development community. AidData will fill this need through using crowdsourcing technology and social networking capabilities. Providing the ability for stakeholders to comment on and add information to development activity records will create a feedback loop on project outputs and outcomes that will help the development community to connect, to coordinate, and to become more results-oriented.
- Data visualization tools: Development information needs to be more accessible and understandable to expert and lay users alike. Identifying and analyzing current and historical trends is difficult without extensive data knowledge, but advanced data visualizations will help present complex data in clear ways. AidData will therefore build into the portal customizable maps of development activities and other interactive visualization tools.
- Links to recipient aid management systems: Recipient governments need more information on development activities being implemented within their own countries. To improve government planning and decision-making, recipient countries need accurate and timely information for both on-budget and off-budget activities within their country. By linking the AidData portal to recipient-government data systems, recipient governments will be better able to target underserved areas, reallocate budgetary resources, and optimize their own development strategies.
About PLAID
The core of the PLAID project, the PLAID database, currently encompasses multilateral and bilateral donor projects spanning the years 1970-2007, with new projects added daily. It contains information from traditional aid sources such as the OECD's Creditor Reporting System (CRS) as well as donors not captured by the CRS and activities that do not fit the OECD definition of Official Development Assistance (ODA). PLAID augments existing data by publishing more complete project descriptions and more detailed aid project purpose codes, health codes, and environment codes. This allows those interested in development finance to gain a more detailed understanding of past and present trends in aid.
Research Outputs
In March 2010, AidData hosted the Aid Transparency and Development Finance Conference at University College at Oxford University. The conference brought together many of the world’s experts on development finance. Twelve of the papers presented at the conference are currently under review as a proposed special issue at World Development. The papers are available here. In the introductory essay to the special issue, we introduce a new dataset of foreign assistance, AidData, that covers more bilateral and multilateral donors and more types of aid than existing datasets while also improving project-level information about the purposes and activities funded by aid. We utilize that data to provide a brief overview of important trends in foreign aid. Contributors to this special issue draw on AidData as well as other sources to analyze aid transparency, "new" donors (not previously reported), aid allocation and aid effectiveness. Our recurring theme in this introductory essay is that AidData and these initial academic projects refine rather than revolutionize our understanding of aid. The database has added significant numbers of new projects, dollar amounts, donors and details about those projects, though there is much more yet to add. We worry that aid debates have been driven by too little information, and that many claims are based on limited or very poor evidence. Rectifying those problems is not an overnight process: refining knowledge takes a lot of time and hard work. The common feature of the papers in this special issue is their careful attention to nuance and detail. In spite of what some recent authors have claimed, aid is neither pure problem nor pure solution; its motivations, distribution, and effects are complex, and shifting. Capturing this complexity requires detailed data, careful thought, and sophisticated methods that allow scholars to make conditional, causal, and descriptive inferences.