Brussels, 24/10/2013 (Agence Europe) - The International Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) has made the suggestion that donors and recipients of humanitarian aid should publish humanitarian aid as open data, independently audited and available on the internet. This announcement was made on Thursday 24 October by the EU Court of Auditors which considers the initiative will prove beneficial not only for those receiving aid but also for the taxpayers. The initiative in question, known as the Integrated Financial Accountability Framework (IFAF), is due to be adopted shortly, during the INTOSAI world congress in Beijing (21-26 October).
“Disaster victims want aid to be transparent and effective. So do taxpayers in donor countries. This initiative enables them to follow the money”, said Gijs de Vries, who is a member of the European Court of Auditors and chairman of the INTOSAI working group that prepared the initiative aimed at improving transparency, accountability and the effectiveness of humanitarian aid. The European Commission, which has already tested IFAF, has now announced that it will be using the instrument.
IFAF is designed to help providers (donors and multilateral organisations involved in channelling funds) and recipients of humanitarian aid to identify, clarify and simplify the flow of aid between them. It will facilitate the assessment of aid effectiveness and reduce the red tape that is a burden on those responsible for distributing aid. Each provider and recipient (or stakeholder) of humanitarian aid is invited to produce a table using readily available data showing the origin of the funds and to whom and on what they are paid out. These tables should be audited along with the other financial reports. When used by all stakeholders, this allows for the reconciliation of balances between stakeholders and the construction of an overall picture of the humanitarian flows from donating to receiving entities. Stakeholders may make IFAF tables and their auditor statements available on the internet as open data, once these have been audited.
More than 160 governments and organisations already publish information about development aid through the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). INTOSAI's Integrated Financial Accountability Framework has been designed to be included as a module within IATI. IFAF has been tested by several organisations of the United Nations, by the European Commission, by one government and by NGOs. (AN/transl.jl)