Today the non-government organization Publish What You Fund  released a report and index evaluating how well donors release information about the aid they’re providing. Here’s how they describe what they did:

The Index assesses the availability of specific information items at organisational, country and activity level for 58 donor organisations, including bilateral and multilateral donors, International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and private foundations. It then ranks these donors by assigning scores for whether specific aid information was published combined with an organisational level assessment of whether the donor is participating in IATI and whether they have a Freedom of Information law (or equivalent disclosure policy).

After evaluating the data, Publish What You Fund reached three major conclusions:

• The index indicates that the vast majority of aid information is not currently published, with only a handful of organisations publishing more than 50% of the information types surveyed.
• The survey results point to the fact that a far greater volume of information is being produced than is being published by organisations.
• The level of transparency of a number of organisations demonstrates that aid transparency is possible across all three levels assessed; these leaders include the World Bank, the Global Fund, the AfDB, the Netherlands, DFID, Sweden and the MCC.