United Nations Office for Project Services

The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) is a voluntary, multistakeholder effort to improve the transparency of development and humanitarian assistance. With support from a technical advisory group, the secretariat of the initiative maintains and updates the data standard for sharing aid information, assists funding organizations in publishing to the IATI data standard, and promotes the use of the data. This grant will cover the Hewlett Foundation’s annual membership dues through 2026. For this period, the initiative has set out three mutually reinforcing objectives. These are improving the quality of IATI data that is published; promoting the use of data by development and humanitarian actors; and strengthening IATI’s data standard and reinvigorating its community of publishers and members. (Strategy: Inclusive Governance).

[Note: grants for annual membership dues typically do not have Appsums. Similarly, future annual dues payments for the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) will not require Appsums. However, since this is Hewlett's first dues payment, and since the IATI Secretariat has just recently shifted to UNOPS as its institutional host, we are providing additional detail to explain and document our support.] IATI was launched at the third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra in 2008 with the aim of increasing the transparency of aid in order to maximize its effectiveness in reducing poverty. Established with a global norm-setting agenda, IATI has developed and now maintains the data standard for publishing aid information in a complete, consistent, and comparable format. The Hewlett Foundation joined IATI when it was founded in 2008. Until now, the UK government has hosted IATI on a largely pro bono basis. As of August, 2013, a consortium led by UNOPS assumed the secretariat role. The Secretariat will operate with funding provided by members: annual dues for Hewlett's class of membership ("provider of development assistance") is currently set at approximately $50,000. In light of the recent shift in hosting arrangements, and since many of the other IATI members will not be able to make their first dues payments until 2014, Hewlett is providing a one-time voluntary dues supplement of $100,000 to help offset IAIT's initial operating costs, for a total 2013 contribution of $150,000.