Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of harmonising reporting requirements across donors.

DFID uses and supports the OECD Development Assistance Committee’s (DAC) system for Official Development Assistance (ODA) statistics and the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), which both facilitate harmonised reporting from donors.

The OECD DAC system provides authoritative ODA spend statistics from donor countries according to the internationally agreed definition of ODA, which enables donor effort to be reported in a standardised and comparable format. As a DAC member, the UK is committed to transparent reporting of ODA in a way that allows international comparisons.

IATI is an initiative to improve the transparency of development and humanitarian resources, including results, based on a standard reporting format. More than 900 organisations and donors are publishing their data to the IATI standard. DFID is encouraging all its partners to join IATI to enhance transparency to both taxpayers and beneficiaries and to improve harmonisation and efficiency.