Differences between the Transparency Indicator and the Aid Transparency Index
Approach
Transparency Indicator
Aid Transparency Index (ATI)
Who conducts the
assessment?

The OECD-UNDP Joint Support Team of
the Global Partnership for Effective
Development Cooperation (GPEDC).

What is the purpose of this
assessment?

The Transparency Indicator is one of 10
indicators of the Global Partnership
Monitoring Framework. It measures the
implementation of the Common Standard.

What is the coverage of
actors?

39 providers of ODA that endorsed the
Busan Partnership Agreement and that
have produced an implementation
schedule.
The Transparency Indicator assesses both
bilateral and multilateral donors.
However, for bilateral donors, it assesses
the country as a whole.


What indicators are used?
The Transparency Indicator scores donors on a
total of 100 points, using three dimensions
that are equally weighted:
 Timeliness of reporting
 Level of detail of information
 Forward-looking nature of information
The coverage ratio (coverage of information
as a share of Country Programmable Aid (CPA)
or ODA is taken into account for measuring all
three dimensions.

Publish What You Fund – an independent
global campaign for aid transparency, with
inputs from independent reviewers and the
organisations being assessed.
The ATI assesses the state of aid transparency
among the world’s major donors, tracks and
encourages progress and hold donors to
account on their own commitments to
improve the transparency of their aid.
The 2013 ATI assessed 67 providers of
development cooperation. This included
some organisations that are covered by
Busan commitments but are yet to produce a
schedule for implementing the Common
Standard. The ATI selection criteria can be
found in the technical paper (see p.4).
The ATI assesses large or influential bilateral
and multilateral donors. It assesses more
than one agency for some large bilaterals
with multiple ministries responsible for
significant proportions of ODA.
The ATI uses 39 indicators, grouped into
weighted categories, to assess how transparent
donor organisations are about their aid activities.
These categories cover overall commitment to
aid transparency and publication of information
at both organisation and activity level.
The commitment category indicators account for
10% of the overall weight. Publication accounts
for 90% of the overall weight. Within the
publication category, the organisation-level
indicators account for 25% of the overall weight,
while the activity-level indicators account for
65%. Within these categories, the subgroups are
equally weighted. See here for more details.
Comments
The ATI maintains the disaggregation
of agencies as often there is a wide
variation in the amount of information
made available by different agencies
in a single country or donor group.
Moreover, agencies often retain a
large amount of autonomy in deciding
how much information they make
available and have different
publication approaches, particularly
for activity-level information, and
should therefore be held accountable
for this.
Approach
Transparency Indicator
Aid Transparency Index (ATI)
Comments
How is comprehensiveness
taken into account?
Comprehensiveness is assessed by two
aspects:
 Level of detail of information – coverage
of fields in IATI or CRS data
 Coverage ratio – coverage of information
as a share of ODA (Note: The
Transparency Indicator assumes 100%
coverage for ODA reported to the CRS. For
IATI publishers, coverage is calculated as
2012 disbursements published to IATI as a
proportion of 2012 ODA disbursements as
reported to the CRS.
 For forward-looking data – proportion of
CPA for 2012 covered by FSS or IATI data.
(Note: where IATI figures cannot be
compared to CPA, the reporting volume is
calculated as a proportion of ODA.)

As the Transparency Indicator relies
on the disbursements field in IATI for
calculating comprehensiveness,
publishers who do not currently
publish this field (e.g. Australia,
Canada or Denmark) score 0 for
coverage ratio in IATI and therefore
only their CRS data is taken into
account, even if they publish
comprehensive current data to other
IATI fields. Furthermore, this
calculation of comprehensiveness
does not differentiate between IATI
data that is a conversion of CRS data
and IATI data that is published
frequently and on a timely basis. So
publishers such as Finland are able to
score as well as publishers like
Netherlands, Sweden and UK that
publish current and timely data to
IATI.
The ATI addresses the issue of
comprehensiveness in two ways:
o By looking at the level of detail of
information (coverage of fields in IATI).
o Not taking into consideration data from
publishers with very low coverage ratio.
Several donors included in the Index
do not currently report to IATI.
Calculating coverage of information as
a share of ODA for these donors is
resource intensive and therefore not
undertaken for the purposes of the
ATI. Methodologically it would be
difficult to take into account coverage
of information as a share of ODA for
some, while not doing so for others.
Instead, purposive sampling is
undertaken for information not
published to IATI by looking at five
randomly selected activities in the
donor’s largest recipient country.
Approach
Transparency Indicator
Aid Transparency Index (ATI)
Comments
How is timeliness taken
into account?


The ATI only takes current and forwardlooking data into account, defined as
information that has been published within
the previous 12 months and that relates to
that period or is forward looking.
In terms of frequency, for the 2013 ATI, less
than quarterly publication (the minimum
requirement for the IATI standard) was
allocated fewer points than more frequent
publication.
Time lags are not taken into account in the
ATI.
The ‘best of’ CRS and IATI scoring
approach of the Transparency
Indicator means that an organisation
may score highly on timeliness (up to
a third of the total possible score on
the Indicator) even if it only provides
historical data to CRS or reports more
frequently to the CRS and with fewer
time lags compared to publishing
current data to IATI on an annual
basis.
The Index includes 36 fields of the IATI
component of the Common Standard.
It includes all the added-value fields of IATI.
Over 26% of the overall Index score is
allocated to the publication of performance
data and project documents.
The ATI allocates 10% of the overall score
available to organisation-level information.
As the Transparency Indicator uses the
best or maximum score between CRS
and IATI scores to calculate the final
score a donor receives for level of
detail, it is possible for a donor to
score highly on this (up to one third of
the total possible score on the
Transparency Indicator) even if it only
provides historical data to the CRS or
provides more detail in its CRS data
compared to current data to IATI.


How is the level of detail
of information (number of
activities for which
information on a data field
is provided) taken into
account?




The Transparency Indicator accounts for
timeliness by looking at the frequency of
publication, time lags in reporting in IATI
and CRS respectively and the coverage
ratio (therefore taking into account both
current and historical data). A total score
for timeliness is awarded by selecting the
best or the maximum of the two scores
received by a donor.
While the methodology for calculating
time lags in reporting to IATI relies on
financial transaction dates, time lags in
CRS are calculated by date of reporting.
It is worth noting that most CRS reporting
relates to statistical information
pertaining to previous years and is a
minimum of 18 months old.
The Transparency Indicator includes 38
fields of the Common Standard.
It does not include some of the addedvalue fields of IATI such as results and
conditions.
All project documents (e.g. tenders,
contracts, evaluations, MoUs, etc.) are
assessed in a single field, which means that
the overall weight assigned to them is low.
The Transparency Indicator does not take
into account organisation level information
such as annual reports, audits, allocation
and procurement policies, organisation
and country strategies and total
organisation budget.





The ATI only takes current and
forward-looking data into account,
defined as information that has been
published within the previous 12
months and that relates to that period
or is forward looking. This emphasis
on current data is why it is possible for
a donor to perform well on the
Transparency Indicator but not in the
ATI.
Approach
Transparency Indicator
Aid Transparency Index (ATI)
Comments
How is forward-looking
data taken into account?

The 2013 ATI assessed forward-looking
information in the following ways:
 Number of years ahead for which the total
organisation budget is provided (for the next
three years).
 Number of years ahead for which recipient
country/sector budgets are provided (for the
next three years).
 Annual breakdown of activity budgets for the
lifetime of the activity.
The ATI was released in October 2013.
It looks at forward-looking data for
the year in which the Index is
published and two years forward. So
the 2013 ATI assessed forward-looking
data for calendar years 2013, 2014
and 2015.

The Transparency Indicator assesses the
time span of the information (for how
many years ahead is information
provided), the level of detail (county,
sector and activity) and the coverage
ratio.
As with timeliness and level of detail, the
Transparency Indicator uses the best or
maximum score between CRS and IATI
scores to calculate the final score a donor
receives for forward-looking data.
For IATI publishers, scores are calculated based
on the level of detail of information, i.e. the
number of countries/activities for which data is
provided. Purposive sampling is undertaken for
information on activity and recipient country
budgets for non-IATI publishers.
The Transparency Indicator was
released in April 2014. Organisations
can score for one year forwardlooking data if the information relates
to 2013. It uses the best or maximum
score between FSS and IATI scores to
calculate the final score a donor
receives for forward-looking data.
The ATI scores forward-looking
information published to IATI higher
than information published to FSS.
This difference in approach to
measuring forward-looking data is
why it is possible for a donor like
Austria, Belgium or Portugal to
perform well on this on the
Transparency Indicator but not in the
ATI.
What data sources are
used?
Data reported to OECD DAC’s CRS and FSS;
and data published to the IATI Registry.
Data published to the IATI Registry and/or any
other publicly available source to which the
donor publishes information on current activities
and forward flows. This includes donors’ own
websites, other third-party sites to which
information is reported and the FSS (if the
information is disaggregated by agency).
Note 1: For more on the methodology used for the Transparency Indicator, see here: http://effectivecooperation.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/3.-GlobalPartnership-Transparency-Indicator-Methodological-Note.pdf . For more on the methodology used for the Aid Transparency Index, see here:
http://ati.publishwhatyoufund.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Technical-paper_FINAL.pdf
Note 2: Publish What You Fund participated in the consultations on the Indicator proposals in 2013. The finalisation and the piloting of the methodology was led by the OECDUNDP Joint Support Team.